


game of survival

by holtzmanns



Series: game of survival [1]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F, Lesbian AU, brooke is a hitwoman, cat and mouse game turned accidental partners in (not) crime, vanessa is running for congress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-03-19 17:22:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18974761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holtzmanns/pseuds/holtzmanns
Summary: She takes the worst ones. The jobs that don’t stay on her conscience, the ones where she can calmly pack up her rifle after a clean shot and walk away without a look back.This job is different - Brooke doesn’t take it because she wants to. She takes it because she has a chance to make more on this one hit than she has on her last ten, and because she owes very, very bad people money who have very, very bad consequences for those who don’t pay up.





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> Not quite sure how this one has happened, but here we are! Hopefully it'll be a fun ride. 
> 
> Endless thanks and love for @writworm42 and @beanierose because they are both the sweetest and most encouraging of even the wildest of ideas.

“Two hundred fifty thousand, starting. Negotiable based on how fast and cleanly the job is done. It should not, under any cost, be traceable back to me.”

“That’s the primary goal of a hit job, is it not?”

The man’s eyes narrow at the drawl from the woman in front of him, seemingly unbothered by the looming bodyguards flanking his sides. She stares back, blue eyes unflinching and facial expression one of almost boredom.

“I need her gone, sooner rather than later. She’s not going down any other way.” The man takes a step forward. “Do we have a deal?”

The woman doesn’t move. “Five hundred thousand, with a hundred and fifty thousand of that deposited upfront in my account by 8 pm tonight.”

Her lip turns up at the man’s resulting growl. “You’re asking me to kill a congressional candidate, one adored by the public and for whom support is only growing across the country with every passing day. You didn’t think it was going to cost you?”

There’s a pause, as the man mulls over her offer. She waits for the answer that she inevitably knows will come.

“You have a deal.”

* * *

It’s not her typical job.

Brooke stopped taking the contracts that messed with her conscience years ago. It’s debatable, though, if she still even has one.

But she has her own system, to keep herself intact. She only takes jobs where she knows that the person has done harm. Where the world will be better off without them in it. Corrupt political figures, drug kingpins, even abusers if the person that hires her can meet her monetary demands.

Brooke has a reputation. She’s whispered about, her name brought up whenever a clean job is necessary.

She only takes the worst ones. The jobs that don’t stay on her conscience, the ones where she can calmly pack up her rifle after a clean shot and walk away without a look back.

This job is different - Brooke doesn’t take it because she wants to. She takes it because she has a chance to make more on this one hit than she has on her last ten, and because she owes very, very bad people money who have very, very bad consequences for those who don’t pay up.

She’d be crazy to do it even if she _didn’t_ have a conscience. The target is Vanessa Mateo, a fucking political powerhouse and overwhelming public favourite whose brash style and fiery comebacks have spawned many a viral video already.

Brooke doesn’t need to be overly involved in politics to know that the woman is unstoppable and has made herself many enemies in the process. After all, one of them has hired Brooke.

She feels a phantom tug on her questionable morals. Vanessa Mateo is a politician, part of a population who by definition are not considered exemplary, but she probably has not done anything worthy of ending her life by Brooke’s standards. Brooke ignores it for now.

Brooke is not a bad person – that’s what she tells herself, at least. She’s Robin Hood, were he to go after lives instead of riches. Putting down the powerful in the name of the less fortunate. It’s a description she’ll go back to after this job on Vanessa Mateo, after she gets the money and saves her own ass.

* * *

The key to a successful hit job is the combination of a multitude of factors.

First is the background research on the target. Getting into the target’s head, into their lives, into their past.

Brooke spreads out the information that she collects onto a well-used bulletin board in her apartment, mapping out Vanessa Mateo. She pins up her social circle - her immediate confidantes, her friends, her coworkers, her rivals in the race, each photo connected by string and forming a complex web that weaves and stretches across the board. She dives into Vanessa’s past, her schooling, her connections, trying to figure how exactly she rose up in the political ranks faster than anyone’s ever seen. Who the blame of her future death can be pinned on.

Next is learning about the target’s habits, their day-to-day routine, where they spend each and every hour of their day.

It requires watching from afar. Patience. Scoping out where they grab coffee, what time they leave work, when they get home. Where ‘home’ actually _is._

The first day that Brooke spies on Vanessa, she hears her voice before she actually sees her. It’s loud and gruff, carrying as she talks to an aide that is hurrying to keep up at her side outside the Capitol Building. Her team follows close behind, a flurry of loose papers and cellphones pressed up to ears, oblivious to the pedestrians that they’re barging past.

It’s not difficult to see that Vanessa is in charge. Brooke watches from her bench as her team trails behind her like puppies, scrambling to follow the orders that she barks at each one of them. She’s the shortest of the group, her heels clacking as she climbs the steps to the Capitol Building with ease.

Brooke maps out the rest of Vanessa’s schedule as the week goes on, eyes on her every action from afar. Despite the nearly six foot build and blonde hair, Brooke is inconspicuous. She moves quietly and blends into crowds, her eyes on Vanessa while giving no one else any reason to look twice at her.

Which leads to the next component of a successful murder for hire: location, location, location.

The gears in Brooke’s mind begin to turn based on where she has seen Vanessa go throughout the week. Is the best place for the deed Vanessa’s campaign office? Vanessa’s apartment building, with no security or concierge to keep out non-residents? The gravel path along the park two blocks away from her home where Vanessa faithfully jogs every morning?

Brooke scouts out each of them, planting bugs to overhear the conversations that occur inside. She worms her way into nearby buildings and looks for vantage points in their windows from where her rifle would be able to provide an accurate shot. She maps out possible getaway routes, ways of abandoning the scene of the future crime without a trace.

After all, to catch a prey, a predator must be prepared.

She ultimately decides on Vanessa’s campaign office as the scene of the crime. Vanessa appears to arrive at the building each morning precisely 45 minutes earlier than the rest of her team, coffee already in hand. A perfect amount of time to get the job done and leave a bloodied mess for her employees to find. Brooke finds the perfect lookout point from which to shoot in the form of a multi-story car park across the street that is still under construction.

A killing shot is only successful if it happens at the right place, at the right time. So Brooke waits, scopes out the layout of Vanessa’s office, bides her time with her eye glued to the viewfinder of her rifle every morning as she waits for the perfect moment, for a perfect shot to the head to line up.

 Brooke is almost going to miss Vanessa, which comes as a surprise. She’s been infinitely more interesting to listen in on and watch than any other of Brooke’s past targets. Her interactions with staff, while maintaining her clear leadership position, are interlaced with comical swear words. Her clashes are a lightshow, Vanessa raining down on rivals who dare to cross her with absolute decimation.

Brooke’s sure that people will mourn. Not only the general public, who have started seeing Vanessa as a ray of hope in a current wasteland of politics, but also the individuals around her. The intern that brings her lunch, that she makes sure to thank every time. The secretary with whom Vanessa spends five minutes of her day with talking about _The Bachelorette_ after a new episode airs. She treats them all with a surprising amount of respect while still maintaining her iron grip. Brooke has to give her that.

But it’s almost time for Vanessa’s end. Brooke needs the money, and someone has to pay. Brooke doesn’t want it to be herself.

She’s in the carpark on yet another morning, yawning into her viewfinder as she watches Vanessa a few blocks away. She’s striding up the street and towards her office with coffee in one hand and her phone in the other while furiously typing out a message. Brooke hopes that she can get a fucking clear shot today, she’s tired of the early mornings. She’s used to working at night, making bodies drop under the glow of streetlights. Not with birds chirping above her head.

As Vanessa gets closer to the office building, Brooke takes the chance to check over her equipment again. Viewfinder in place, silencer positioned for minimal noise of the shot, rifle loaded. She’s methodical in her examination; following a routine she’s had her entire career. She’s about to get back into position when-

Wait.

There’s talking.

Not Vanessa, but from inside her office. Vanessa is still outside.

The voices travel to the earpiece in Brooke’s ear, the bug that Brooke planted in Vanessa’s office continuing to work.

 _“Quick, over there-no not_ **_there_** _, you dipshit, leave it under the desk.”_

_“You don’t think someone will fucking notice it if it’s under the desk?”_

_“They’re gonna go kaboom before they even realize what they’re looking at. Set the timer.”_

Brooke comes to two realizations at once.

First, she’s never had others try to kill her target at the same time as her. It’s new. An interesting twist.

Second, fuck, _fuck_ , she can’t let them kill her first, she needs that money _goddamnit-_

She’s running before she even realizes what she’s doing, bursting out of the car park and down the street and running head fucking first into none other than Vanessa Mateo herself.

“Shit! So sorry about that ma’am, let me help you get that-”

Vanessa tries to dab at the new coffee stain on Brooke’s shirt with a tissue, oblivious to the way Brooke is staring at her because she’s right _there_ , closer than she’s ever been, all strong perfume and brown curls falling around her shoulders and her nearby office building is about to _explode._

“This morning really started off on a rough note, huh? Hope it gets better for the both of us.” Brooke recognizes Vanessa’s political voice, the one she puts on for potential voters and funding backers.

Vanessa doesn’t notice as Brooke starts to tug them in the opposite direction from Vanessa’s office, continuing to inspect the stain damage on Brooke’s shirt near her collarbone instead as she walks.

“-Anyway, take my card, send me the dry cleaning bill for your shirt. I can cover it.” Vanessa grins at Brooke before turning back in the direction of her office. “Great meeting you, truly.”

No, no, _no-_

“Wait!” Brooke’s voice comes out more louder, more forceful, than expected, and Vanessa turns back in surprise.

Brooke doesn’t know what to say after that, not thinking she’d get this far. It is a blessing in disguise when she only has to dither over her words for a few seconds before the inevitable-

_Boom._

Her arms around Vanessa are immediate, pulling her close and shielding her body away from the direction of the office. The flames are already licking up the sides of the building when Brooke lets Vanessa go, coffee stains and bumps into strangers long forgotten.

Brooke slips away while Vanessa is staring at the falling debris from the building in disbelief. She packs up her things at the car park, watches how Vanessa cranes her neck back and forth, to presumably look for her.

Brooke is good at disappearing. She has a talent of being able to slip away, leaving a mess behind for others to come in and clean up.

She’s angry as she watches the building burn, the bugs that she planted inside no longer working after being fried to a crisp. But she’s more so confused. She knows Vanessa has a lot of political enemies. But who else wanted to straight up kill her?

It’s messy. The explosion has made things _messy_. Vanessa has seen her (something that has never happened with a target, should never happen with a target), she now knows what Brooke looks like. Was searching for her in the aftermath.

It’s going to make Brooke’s job of killing her a lot harder, not being an anonymous face to her target. Especially if she needs to apparently compete against others to do it.


	2. chapter two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of her wants to run, to quit the race with her tail between her legs and go back to a life of anonymity. Vanessa pushes the thoughts down. She doesn’t falter. She hasn’t in the past, and she won’t now. Good fucking luck to anyone trying to stop her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @writworm42 and @beanierose are the most wonderful betas in the world and I adore them.
> 
> Fic title taken from the song Game of Survival by Ruelle. I love music way too much and may or may not have created a playlist to go with this fic - here's the link for anyone who wants to listen: https://open.spotify.com/user/katescullys/playlist/2duffrxBe33iscOL01je6W?si=JV6e3d2mTv-ThKJMqXKpNg

Vanessa Mateo doesn’t falter. Not after fighting tooth and nail to get where she is, facing off against rivals that are both literally and figuratively larger than her while never once backing down.  

Watching the flames eat away at the walls of her office, however, tearing them down in a cloud of smoke and ashes, is enough to start to shake the strong foundations that she’s created for herself.

Her team is here, a flurry of movement and panicked calls and whizzing around her like flies while trying to figure out what to do. Someone (A’keria?) who is able to actually function in crisis has called 911. A myriad of firetrucks and police cars are already here with firefighters suiting up to confront the blaze that has started to spread to the building beside it.

Vanessa is glad that those around her are doing something, at least. She still hasn’t moved from her spot on the sidewalk. Her brain feels grey, all static and buzzing noises that are blocking any rational thoughts.

“Okay. Run me through it again. What exactly happened?” A’keria’s voice cuts through the fog, her campaign manager ever persistent and looking for some sort of answer. Not that Vanessa has one to give to her.

“I don’t fucking know, okay?” Vanessa’s voice comes out snappier than intended, if A’keria’s raised eyebrow is indicative of anything. She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose with two fingers. “All I know is that it blew up in front of my face and I only just missed becoming toast with it.”

A’keria’s face softens, hearing the slight break in Vanessa’s voice. Her hand is on Vanessa’s shoulder, as reassuring as she can be with the woman who is in charge of her paycheck. “We’ll figure this out. Silky is already on the phone to get more security because we’re going to need it on you 24/7 - don’t even try to argue with me.”

Vanessa huffs but doesn’t fight back. She’s been fiercely independent throughout this campaign, and the idea of continuous supervision makes her want to run and never leave her apartment again. However, she can’t deny that it’s necessary - not with the crackling noises of an office now turned to blackened dust continuing to echo in her ears.

A police detective grabs Vanessa as soon as A’keria turns away from her. “Just one more time ma’am, can you explain what happened? Working on getting this timeline straight.”

His reedy voice makes her wince. She tries her best to hold back the choice words that she so desperately wants to let out - the ones that she can’t freely express to anyone who’s _not_ on her team, now that she’s running for office. Still needing to portray a wholesome image and all that.

Vanessa takes a deep breath, attempting to compose herself. She flashes the detective a polite smile: her ‘political’ face as A’keria calls it.

She’s gotten better at keeping her emotions in check as the campaign has continued, moving the heart that she normally keeps on her sleeve into a safer space inside of her mind. Her team has been grateful for it, having to intervene with less and less damage control as she’s stopped being completely honest with whomever she feels has wronged her in any way. She’s starting to feel like a rich white woman, slowly learning how to get what she wants with fake niceties and smiles that mask the true emotions that she holds back.   

Vanessa is honest with the detective for the most part, recalling the sped up walk to work after the longer than normal lineup at the coffee shop that morning. She falters, though, when she remembers the wild eyed woman that she had spilled her coffee on.

The one who barely noticed the spill and instead pulled Vanessa close and shielded her from falling debris when the office exploded. The one who disappeared right afterwards, like a fucking blonde and tall fairy godmother that Vanessa now feels like she’s imagined the entire time.

But she hasn’t, right? The woman had been real and there. Or at least, Vanessa thinks she was.

The detective clicks his pen while waiting for her to finish, the incessant noise making her eye twitch. Vanessa has to hold back the sharp words about to roll off of her tongue that so desperately want to tell the man to shut the fuck up.

“I’m sorry Detective, that’s all that happened, really. I was walking to work and it blew up in front of me. I’m just so relieved that none of my team was there, it could have ended so much worse.” The diplomatic answer rolls off of her tongue so smoothly that she almost believes it herself.

Vanessa doesn’t know why she holds back on mentioning the woman - she can easily describe her to the police and give them a potential lead. But something is off. The woman doesn’t fit in the picture. The way she grabbed Vanessa was as if she knew the explosion was about to happen, sure. But then why would she protect her?

The detective fixes Vanessa with a stare, searching her eyes for any evidence that she’s lying. He doesn’t find it, judging by the way he thanks her and turns back to his notes.

She lets out a breath, turning her gaze back towards the building. Or at least, where it used to stand. She knows she’s lucky, that the team is lucky. They didn’t lose data; backups of plans and budgets and work for the campaign saved online in the cloud.

Still, she’s now lost her base in an explosion that definitely was not an accident. She almost lost her _life._

Her run for congress is her baby - it’s what she’s been working towards for almost her entire adult existence. Years of dead-end jobs, living paycheck to paycheck on meagre wages, waiting for her turn to burst onto the scene and make an impression. This year has finally been her chance.

It’s clear, though, that someone doesn’t want it to happen. She’s big enough of a threat.

Part of her wants to run, to quit the race with her tail between her legs and go back to a life of anonymity. Vanessa pushes the thoughts down. She doesn’t falter. She hasn’t in the past, and she won’t now. Good fucking luck to anyone trying to stop her.

When Silky hangs up the phone and comes up to her to provide more details around her extra security, Vanessa doesn’t argue. She can handle some suits surrounding her in order to keep pushing forward. Let the bastards who attempted to kill her try again. She doesn’t go down that easy.

Maybe the blonde will reappear, saving her life once more. At least she’ll be able to catch her fucking name next time.

* * *

The next few days are chaos as they’re caught up in a media storm, her publicist Ra’jah fielding never ending calls from news outlets that need Vanessa’s perspective on the attempt on her life. Vanessa provides diplomatic statements in interviews, droning on about how grateful she is for the public’s support and how she’s more committed than ever to the campaign.

Vanessa sits back on a couch as A’keria directs the various team members and volunteers assembled in the latter’s living room, which over a few days has transformed into makeshift campaign headquarters. She’s willing to let her campaign manager take the lead for now and get them moving forward. She’s fucking exhausted.

Silky drops onto the couch next to Vanessa after A’keria finishes speaking, nearly knocking files out of her hands.

“Jesus, Silky.”

Silky ignores her and instead gestures to two men in suits that are standing in front of them. “These are the lovely knights in shining armour who will be part of your security detail. Hopefully they’ll keep you from going kaboom.”

Vanessa’s mouth turns up in a wry smile. Silky may be crass, but she is funny. The dark humour feels necessary at a time like this, and it’s something that her college friend and now deputy campaign manager is always able to channel.

Vanessa sticks out a hand for each of them to shake, to which they oblige without any change in facial expression. Both have handshakes that _could_ stand to be stronger. Not quite off to the best start.

“If you try to run from them, I _will_ come after your ass. So behave."

Vanessa snorts at Silky’s faux threatening tone. “Why, you don’t think that they can keep up with me?”

“No, I think they can. I just think that you’re too good at getting yourself into…explosive situations.” Silky wiggles her eyebrows as Vanessa grabs for a couch cushion and smacks her with it. “Ow, bitch!”

“ _God_ Silk, still too fucking soon.” Silky is the only person that Vanessa wouldn’t immediately fire for such a stupid and morbid pun.  
  
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” Silky ducks the next time that Vanessa lifts up the cushion. “Ha, missed that time. Anyway, let these nice men follow you around. The only time, actually, that you should let men follow you around.”

Vanessa tries to ignore the men indeed close behind her as she heads home from A’keria’s place a couple of hours later. She regrets walking instead of taking an Uber, the crowds on the busy downtown street positively stifling as she keeps her head down and pushes through them.

She needs sleep. Or maybe a bath. Perhaps both, to prepare for the press conference that Ra’jah has scheduled for her tomorrow. Vanessa can already hear Ra’jah’s voice in her ears berating her for inevitably losing her temper at a journalist. It happens at least once every time, no matter how hard she works to keep her emotions in check. It’s what the public loves, though, her ability to call others out when she needs to.

Sure, it’s made her quite a few enemies. But none of them have tried to kill her…Oh, wait.

Vanessa has to hold in a snicker while coming up to a busy intersection. Silky’s stupid sense of humour is starting to rub off on her.

She wonders if she should feel more afraid, rather than immediately jumping to gallows-esque jokes. Shouldn’t she be worried about her safety, after almost getting killed?

Vanessa knows she’s not invincible. She knows her size, and that there are bigger dogs out there who could probably crush her if they wanted to - both literally and figuratively. She’s not stupid.

It doesn’t mean she has to give in, though, to fear and anxiety and worry about those trying to intimidate her. Sure, the consequences are higher than a simple school bully trying to push her into a locker. She’s just not ready to go down without a fight.

She just needs a _plan_ , her team can’t only be on the defensive, they need to show their strength-

A woman. Tall, blonde. Separated from Vanessa by a few people on the sidewalk.

The woman turns her head as she reaches into her bag, side profile instantly recognizable. Vanessa’s seen that face, she _knows_ that face-

“Wait! You!”

The woman freezes for a second before she turns her face away abruptly, disappearing into the crowd. She’s fast. But so is Vanessa.

Apologies tumble from her lips as she pushes her way through the overcrowded sidewalk, leaving her security detail behind as she tries to follow the blonde ponytail that’s so painfully close, only a few meters if she could just _reach-_

“What the hell?”

The woman is gone. Vanessa looks around wildly as she tries to catch her breath, stretching up on her toes and straining her neck because there’s no way the woman could have disappeared that fast without a trace. She _saw_ her - the same woman who she spilled her fucking coffee on and who grabbed her during the blast and then disappeared without a trace, vanishing into nothing. Just like now. Vanessa’s sigh in frustration is strangled.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” The two men acting as her security detail catch up to her, trying and failing to hide their wheezing breaths.

She brushes them off. “I’m fine. Did you see…have you seen…never mind.”

There’s no point. She’s gone again. Vanishing like a fucking ghost who has developed a penchant for stalking her.

Vanessa had started to doubt her memories about the woman the more she thought about her, if she even existed at all. The office explosion had happened early in the morning after all; maybe she had been half asleep and still dreaming.

Standing stock still at a busy intersection and ignoring the small crowd forming ( _“Is that Vanessa Mateo?”_ ) as she cranes her neck and tries in vain to spot her, Vanessa comes to three conclusions.

One: the woman _is_ real, not just a fabrication of her mind attempting to make sense of the explosion.

Two: she’s fucking involved in this whole mess, there’s no doubt. Vanessa needs to find out how.

Three: for the second time, she had been nearly in Vanessa’s reach, so tantalizingly close.

Vanessa needs to get to her.

All she can think about is the flick of the woman’s blonde hair, the long legs with the infuriating ability of helping her escape not once, but twice.

She ignores the rational part of her brain that is screaming at her about safety and having others involved for backup. The woman fucking saved her life, for Christ’s sake. She wouldn’t kill her. Or at least, not right away. Vanessa is good at talking herself out of situations.

Besides, this time, she’s going to have a plan.

Two can play at this game.  

* * *

“What the hell are you setting up a camera for?” A’keria’s voice is tired as she looks at Vanessa, who is fiddling with the device outside A’keria’s apartment building.

Vanessa doesn’t look up as she positions the camera between the leaves of a flower arrangement. “Just being careful, is all.”

“Don’t be getting all paranoid on me.”

“What’s wrong with some extra security?”

“Look.” Akeria’s face softens. “We’ve got you, okay? We’re not going to have a repeat of the office anytime soon if we can help it.”

Vanessa nods, waving her off. She ignores the sigh that she can hear falling from A’keria’s lips as she walks away.

Perhaps it’s a blessing that A’keria is mistaking her behaviour as a reaction to the explosion of the office. How the hell is she supposed to explain that she’s trying to catch a woman who has been haunting not only her thoughts, but her whereabouts too?

She didn’t tell A’keria about the woman after the explosion either, the same way she didn’t tell the police detective. Her brain had been too fuzzy to do so at the time, and each passing day makes her want to keep the situation to herself.

A’keria wouldn’t get it. She’d tell Vanessa that her mind is playing tricks on her, that the woman on the street afterwards was just a lookalike. That there is no way there is something fishy about her.

So what if Vanessa wants to keep it to herself? She doesn’t need a team to fucking find out what is happening once and for all. She’s going to find out on her own, and has all the backup she already needs. The woman isn’t going to know what hit her - quite literally.


	3. chapter three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe scoping out Vanessa’s route one extra time before pulling the trigger was not the smartest idea. She can admit that. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been quite as bold as she was with her proximity to Vanessa, drawn like a moth to a flame by the smell of her perfume as she made her way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading/supporting so far! 
> 
> The biggest of thanks ALSO to @writworm42 for being the most encouraging and also for beta-ing and being the best in general.

“Every time I see one of your boards I’m reminded of how absolutely fucking insane you are. You know that, right?”

Nina’s fingers trace along the strings that criss-cross on the bulletin board, connecting the various notes and pictures of Vanessa. She whistles when she lifts a picture and finds more pictures on the board laying underneath. “Complete psychopath.”

Brooke gives her a wry smile from her spot against the kitchen counter before taking a sip of her drink. “Very cutting words from someone who befriended the woman who killed her husband.”

“Eh, I paid you for it,” Nina shrugs. “Did you make one of these boards for him back then too?”

“Naturally. You were on it.”

“Really?” Nina spins away from the bulletin board to face Brooke, perking up. “Cool. Also spooky.”

Brooke raises an eyebrow. “You also gave me half of the photos to put on that board. Forget that already?”

“Meh,” Nina makes a face. “Not like he deserves to be memorable.”

Brooke laughs despite herself.  

“Why are you killing her again? I like her.” Nina plucks a photo of Vanessa from the board and holds it up. Vanessa’s yelling into a microphone in the photo, crowds of cheering supporters taking up the background behind her. “She’s spunky. I went to a rally of hers and the crowd wouldn’t stop chanting her name the entire time.”

“Mama needs her money. Can’t wait to kill a fucking rockstar, apparently.” Brooke knocks back her glass of whiskey, revelling in the feeling of the liquid pouring down her throat like flames. She feels it spread through her veins and add to the weariness that is seeping into her bones.

Nina’s face softens and she crosses the room towards Brooke, sitting down across from her and placing a hand on her arm. “I still have some of Dave’s life insurance money left, y’know. You could take it if-”

Brooke cuts her off. “I already took enough of that from you after I put a bullet in his head,” she puts her free hand on top of Nina’s and squeezes it. “Don’t worry about it. I gotta earn it myself.”  
  
“Okay, but-”

“ _No,_ Nina.”

Brooke doesn’t want the help. She can get the money on her own, more than what she needs after she takes care of Vanessa - she has options other than taking pity money from Nina. Not that Nina would intend it to be so, but Brooke doesn’t take handouts from anyone. She doesn’t need them. 

Nina isn’t assuaged as she takes a sip of her nearly empty glass of wine. Brooke wordlessly picks up the bottle to top her up, nodding when Nina lets out a grunt in thanks. “Look. If things get dire and you need help in the near future, you gotta tell me, okay? I don’t wanna be worried about you.”

Brooke merely gives her a look.

“Okay, okay!” Nina raises her hands in defeat. “More worried than usual. You’re a weird little murder machine but also one that needs to be kept safe.”

The same Nina who orchestrated the death of her husband without batting an eye also has a surprisingly strong maternal instinct for those that she actually cares about, something that Brooke finds strangely endearing.

Brooke shrugs at her. “I’ll be fine. I always am. I just need to get this fucking job done first, is all.”

“When did you take it?” Nina’s brought the photo of Vanessa with her to the counter and pushes it in between the two of them. Brooke can’t help it when her eyes catch on the sharp cut of Vanessa’s suit, the glossy hair falling over her shoulders.

“Approximately a week ago.” She winces at the realization that it’s been seven fucking days. She’s definitely slipping.

“A _week?_ You killed Dave less than two days after I told you to.”

Brooke gives her a wry smile. “No offense, but he was an easy mark.”

Nina snickers, not attempting to deny the rag on her late husband. “None taken. What about Miss Congress here?”

Brooke groans, dropping her face into her hands. “I don’t know _."_  

“What on earth does that mean?”

“I don’t _know_ , Nina. Something about her is messing with me. I just can’t get a fucking clear shot. ” Brooke’s voice is muffled against her own sleeve.

No matter how much she wants to avoid the topic, it’s true. Brooke’s uncanny ability to completely disconnect herself from her targets without giving them a second thought is now gone, any resemblance of calm and efficiency missing with Vanessa.

She can’t deny that Vanessa is different from her other targets. She’s wily, she’s unpredictable, she’s a firecracker in a profession of bureaucracy threatening to burn the entire institution to the ground. She does things that sway Brooke in one direction before completely going off in another, dragging Brooke along for the ride. Brooke is captivated. Never has she had a target so interesting.

Perhaps that’s why she hasn’t yet killed her. While Brooke’s job gives her the thrill of the chase for a short period of time that she so desperately craves, it also has the tendency of falling into a repetitive pattern. Bullets to the head week after week have started to feel as routine as paying her bills and watering her plants. The last week in comparison has been a breath of fresh air - Vanessa is a target where Brooke, for once, wants to hear what comes out of her mouth.

She tells Nina everything that has happened from the last week, from saving Vanessa’s life outside of her office to being spotted by her on the street earlier in the day. Nina looks as if she wants to burst when Brooke finishes talking, though only one phrase escapes her lips.

“I always knew you had a weakness for women in powersuits.”

“Oh, shut up _._ ” Brooke snickers despite herself, giving Nina a light shove.

Maybe scoping out Vanessa’s route _one extra time_ before pulling the trigger was not the smartest idea. She can admit that. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been quite as bold as she was with her proximity to Vanessa, drawn like a moth to a flame by the smell of her perfume as she made her way home.

It should be simple. It _is_ simple. It seems that way now, talking it through with Nina. Yet here they are, with Vanessa still alive and Brooke bumbling like a cat who can’t quite get the cream.

The bulletin board taunts her from across the room. Brooke narrows her eyes at the string tendrils that grab at her attention like vines and refuse to let her escape the thoughts of her target and the clack of her heels on the sidewalk.

She’s never doubted her abilities in the past - she’s never had to. Vanessa is distracting her in a way that no one else has before. She wishes she could compartmentalize, tuck all thoughts of Vanessa away in a box and do her job. If only Vanessa herself wasn’t her target.

Brooke’s phone buzzes on the counter, the restricted number glowing on the screen and leaving no doubt in her mind who the call is from. Brooke puts it on speakerphone as she holds a finger to her lips, to which Nina nods wide-eyed.

“I was promised you’d do it fast.” The voice on the other end is angry, frantic, though the type of frantic trying to hide behind intimidation.

Brooke doesn’t miss a beat. “Is that what you also say to your favourite call girls?”

Nina lets out a little noise, clapping a hand over her mouth when Brooke gives her a look.

“Shut the fuck up.” The voice on the other end of the phone is a growl, one that makes Brooke want to roll her eyes despite the slight unease growing in her stomach. She pushes it down, letting her answer roll off of her tongue with unearned confidence that she’s become adept at faking when she needs to.

“The process takes time. You want to be exposed in the process, I can kill her tomorrow. If you want the inevitable investigation to her death to lead only in avenues away from you, you have to wait. I need to set the scene first.”

It’s a lie. She’s done no such thing. She’s only stumbled over her own feet so far on this job. Not that he needs to know that.

The voice is calmer now, less agitated. Equally as pushy. “One more week. That’s what you get. Don’t think that I can’t get rid of you just as easily.”

“Oh darling, who said that would be easy?” She snorts despite herself, letting the threat roll off her back. She ignores Nina’s expression of pure panic.

“One. Week. Or the advance money comes back to me, with more consequences for not getting the fucking job done.”

“Anyone ever teach you about patience?” Brooke’s voice comes out in a snap. She’s tolerant, but he’s starting to get on her nerves. It happens every time that she lets clients get brave with their demands. She really needs to work on putting them in their place. “It’ll happen. One week.”

* * *

Vanessa has a plan. 

Sure, it’s incredibly stupid, and A’keria would absolutely rip her a new one if she found out, but Vanessa doesn’t care. She needs to get to the bottom of this.

The private detective that she’s hired to find the woman had let out a long suffering sigh when all that Vanessa could give him was that the woman was blonde. And tall. And had legs for miles. Though he had seemed less impressed by that fact than Vanessa.

There’s no sign of the woman at either of the two locations that Vanessa had seen her in the past during the detective’s search. Vanessa isn’t surprised - there’s no way the woman would leave any traces behind for others to track, not by the way she slipped away from Vanessa the last time that they interacted.

The idea comes to her during a meeting with a potential donor that her team is trying to win over. She smoothly answers a question whenever her assistant nudges her to pay attention, but otherwise lets her mind wander.

Both of the times that Vanessa has seen the woman were unexpected in the moment. Outside her old office right before it blew up, and then on her commute home. Separate instances where Vanessa was completely off guard by her presence.

Both are locations that would have been too serendipitous for the woman to be present at completely by chance. Which must mean-

She knows Vanessa. Or her schedule. Or where to find her.

The thought is slightly unnerving. Does the woman know where she is right now? Is she waiting outside the donor’s house, disguised amongst the trees that line the entrance?  

Vanessa knows she’s probably spiralling, concocting scenarios in her head about a woman who perhaps isn’t involved in anything shady at all. Maybe the woman that Vanessa saw that day on the street wasn’t even _her._

But then why did she run?

There’s a slight, slight possibility that Vanessa’s suspicions about crossing paths twice with the woman not being chance encounters are true. While listening to the monotone voice of the donor talking about his potential investment, she thinks she’s figured out a way to make it happen a third time.

She stays late at the office one Wednesday night.

A’keria had wasted no time in procuring them a new set of headquarters. Vanessa suspects it’s not due to efficiency, but rather A’keria being tired of _‘everyone always being in my damn house’_.

The new office is a few streets over from their old one. Vanessa can see the latter through the window, charred skeleton of a building now boarded up and under renovation. She still smells the smoke in her lungs, remembers the debris floating like dust in the aftermath. Despite the explosion only happening a little over a week ago, she feels as if it’s been ages.

She says goodbye to each team member one by one as they head out for the night later than usual after another long planning meeting. She nods absentmindedly when Silky tells her to go home as well. Once finally left by herself, she scurries to her bag and takes out what she needs. The object is heavy in her hands, the weight of it matching the high stakes of what she may have to do. She tucks it into her coat.  

She’s not going to find the woman by chasing her, not when she doesn’t want to be found. No, Vanessa has to let the woman come to her.

What better way to do so than by acting as bait?

If the woman really wasn’t in both places by coincidence, there’s a chance that she’s been around Vanessa at other times too. Maybe she still is. Vanessa just has to draw her out.

She takes her time as she packs up her things to leave. The gun presses against her side through the coat pocket. It’s not as if she’s planning to _use_ it. She’s just...being careful, that’s all. 

She can only imagine the field day that her team would have if they saw her carrying one (A’keria alone would have approximately three breakdowns, considering Vanessa’s public stance on gun control), but she needs the protection. She doesn’t know what this woman is capable of or what she can do. If she crosses paths with her tonight, she needs backup.

Vanessa turns off the last of the lights in the office when a glint through the window catches her eye. She squints, about to take a step to get closer to the window, before turning on her heel and heading out the door instead. Probably just her eyes playing tricks on her.  

The sun is beginning to set as she steps outside, walking on her tiptoes to as not to let her heels touch the ground and make a noise. She walks slowly, eyes darting around for a flash of blonde hair, for any sign that the woman could be here.

Vanessa feels eyes on her with every step that she takes, every peek around adjacent buildings and across streets. She’s certain that her mind is playing tricks on her; she’s being foolish and there’s most likely nobody even left around now that the sun has gone down, orange hues that were cast now fading to darker shadows.

That is, until she turns a corner and comes face to face with the object of her search herself.

Blue eyes, conniving and cold, regard Vanessa with merely a raised eyebrow as she yanks the gun out of her coat. Vanessa’s hands are shaky as she points it at the woman, who now appears to have no interest in running from her.

“Third time seems to be the charm.” The woman’s voice comes out in a drawl, unbothered but most definitely calculated.

“Who the fuck are you?” Vanessa doesn’t intend her voice to come out sounding as panicked as it does. She’s calm. Very calm. Extremely calm. Not at all wanting to run.

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?" The woman takes a step closer to her. Every cell in Vanessa’s body is screaming at her to take a step backwards, to _escape_ , but she’s frozen to her spot on the sidewalk like ice. 

“You were there. I fucking spilled coffee on you.” Vanessa grips the gun tighter. “Then on the street again, I know it was you, I _saw_ you. Now who are you?”

“No need to sound so confident there.” The woman fucking _purrs_ at her, and if Vanjie wasn’t afraid for her life she’d be feeling warm for a very different reason.

The woman closes the gap between them in a few swift steps. Vanessa watches, frozen in place as she lifts a hand to the gun, fingers delicately wrapping around the barrel and pushing it down to point at the floor between them.

The platinum hair cascades past her shoulders in waves, stopping just past her ribs. She’s close enough that a lock of her hair brushes lightly against Vanessa’s cheek, a sensation akin to an electric shock straight to the heart.

This close, she’s at eye level with the woman’s shoulders. The fact that Vanessa is in heels doesn’t help either, because the woman is too. Heels that are higher.

Vanessa has to tilt her head up to make eye contact with the woman, who is looking down at her with an expression that she can’t quite figure out. Intrigue? Curiosity? Hunger? Vanessa feels like she’s being eaten alive under her gaze, but doesn’t tear her eyes away.

“You’re mighty hard to track, you know that?” The woman’s fingers graze her wrist and Vanessa flinches under the touch, feels them move up her forearm. “Moving around so many different places.”

“What do you even want, bitch?” It comes out in more of a growl that Vanessa intends it to, but she’s scared and a bit turned on and also _pissed_.

“Now what would the public say if they heard their candidate swearing like a sailor?” The woman’s lips are upturned in a smirk, one that Vanessa hates how much she desperately wants to wipe off of her.

“Fuck off.”

The woman’s hand shifts from Vanessa’s arm to her back, travelling up her spine. The knowing glint in the woman’s eye tells her that she definitely has noticed the way that the touch is making Vanessa shiver.

“I’m sorry that our first proper meeting has been so short. It’s been a pleasure. I apologize for this.” The woman’s fingers travel up the base of her neck.

“What? What do you mean?” Vanessa’s voice comes out fast, frantic, she should _lift her fucking gun up,_ when the woman tilts her chin up with her other hand and presses her lips to hers. 

She’s not thinking straight because it’s overwhelming, her senses are blown out and all she can feel is fingers tightening around her neck and a kiss that is deepening and the woman fucking _biting_ her lip and soothing the spot with her tongue and suddenly everything is far away, an echo. The last thing that she focuses on is the platinum blonde waves before everything fades in front of her and it’s black and there’s-

Nothing.


	4. chapter four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wonders what it would be like if she met Vanessa at a club, if she danced with her and pulled her closer, hands gripping her hips all without knowing her name. If she got to take her home, press kisses up her body and overwhelm her senses and make her scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a wild ride and all over the place. Enjoy!
> 
> Thank you thank you @writworm42 for listening to me fret over this chapter for the last few days and providing so much reassurance and beta-ing, I owe you a lot. Also @pinkgrapefruit for reading it over and convincing me it was okay.

She does a mental check as she sits up, uncurling herself from her slumped position on the pavement - wallet, shoes, purse, keys, coat, nearly everything still on her. Gun-

Where’s her gun?

Vanessa swivels frantically, patting the ground around her and looking around the alley. Did the bitch really take her gun?

The sky is a watercolour mural of pinks and reds as the sun sets, not all different from when Vanessa first confronted the woman. Which means that it hasn’t been very long since the woman knocked her out (and kissed her, _kissed_ her), and there’s a chance she could still be nearby.

Vanessa stands up slowly, leaning against the building wall so that she doesn’t fall back over. She feels like shit. The headache that has started to bloom in the space between her eyes is making the world spin and all she wants to do is sit back down on the alley pavement, but she keeps herself up. She needs to tell someone, her need to investigate Blondie on her own be damned.

Silky is already in her pajamas when Vanessa knocks, opening the door with a perplexed expression. “Bitch, why are you still in a pantsuit? Did you just leave the office?”

Vanessa shoves past her into her apartment, wasting no time in shedding her jacket and purse onto the ground. “Never mind that. I have a small, tiny, miniscule problem that may actually be a huge problem. But who’s to say?”

Silky gives her a long look. “Why do I have a feeling that it’s the latter?” She sighs. “Fine, pour the wine." 

Silky interrupts Vanessa’s story approximately forty three times, swear words and exclamations galore as Vanessa tells her everything. When Vanessa is done, though, she’s speechless; and her only response is to take a sip of her wine. A very, very, big sip, Vanessa notes, before Silky can collect herself enough to say anything.

“You are _so_ stupid.”

“We been knew, Silky.”

“You could have gotten yourself killed!”

“But I _didn’t_. Score one for me.”

“Jesus Christ.” Silky is rubbing her temples, and Vanessa almost wants to reach out and pat her shoulder. Knowing about the absolute death glare that Silky would give to her if she did, though, makes her hold back.

Silky lets out a sigh, and Vanessa can see the gears turning in her head, trying to make sense of the story. “So...she...who is she again?”

Vanessa shrugs. “I have no fucking clue. All I know is that she’s a good enough kisser that it damn nearly knocked me out. Oh, wait.” She snickers at Silky’s almost pained expression. “Too soon?”

“Vanessa, this is serious! And dangerous. I need to call A’keria-”

“No, don’t!” Vanessa yelps, tugging on Silky’s arm. “You know she’ll freak the fuck out like she always does and make a big fuss. I’m fine! No harm done.”

“No harm done yet! There’s a target on your back already, and here you are, playing with fire with some bitch who seems like she’s killed a man at least once.”

“She would have killed me already if she wanted to. I don’t think she’s out for that.”

The words barely leave Vanessa’s lips before Silky leans back in exasperation. “You don’t think- bitch, she fully KO’d you! Why are you acting like this is a fully normal situation?”

“I’ll be careful, okay? Just wanted...some backup. Someone else to know while I try to figure out who she is.”

Silky looks as if she’s aged a decade in the span of ten minutes. Vanessa almost feels bad - almost. Silky has been her best friend for years, way before the campaign started, and has had her own share of crises that Vanessa has had to clean up too.

“Fuck. Fine. Be careful, and tell me everything as you do it. Before you do it, even. I want eyes on you the whole time.” Silky looks around. “Speaking of which, where the fuck are the bodyguards I hired for you?”

Vanessa’s expression is sheepish. “I may or may not have let them go after a day after I managed to outrun them. Maybe or maybe not while chasing Blondie.”

“Are you kidding? We’ve still been paying them this entire time!”

Vanessa holds back a laugh when Silky drops her head into her hands. “Sorry, Silk. Didn’t think they’d be so...bumbling.”

“Your chaotic tendencies will be the absolute death of me during this campaign. You’re giving me white hairs. I hope you know that.”

“Love you too, Silky.”

Vanessa’s in a lighter state when she eventually leaves Silky’s apartment, the burden of secrets she’s been carrying now shared between the two of them. She knows that Silky has her back, and won’t tell A’keria or the rest of the team. Vanessa doesn’t need that type of ass whooping from her campaign manager. She’s also promised to let Silky know her whereabouts before doing anything stupid again - because, according to Silky, she _‘absolutely fucking will in the future and we both know it’_.

Her mood dampens, though, watching the shadows cast by the lampposts on her walk home. They turn into figures, taunting her in the darkness and making her shudder. She can’t help but look twice into each alleyway that she passes, to speed up whenever she sees someone else walking by at the late hour.  

The fatigue is beginning to set in once more, tugging her down like the way she fell when the woman-

Vanessa shivers. She made light of it at Silky’s, but she really could have been in danger. The woman was too in control, too calculating, too...powerful.

She is ignoring the fact that the kiss was the hottest thing that she’s ever experienced in her life, gentle and rough and rocking her world all at once. She’s _definitely_ not thinking about the fact that she wants to kiss her again.

She’d be insane to want that.

Right?

Ducking into her apartment doesn’t provide Vanessa the calm she so desperately needs. Suddenly the windows are too big, too uncovered, the walls too thin, she feels like there are eyes everywhere, watching her. Does the woman know where she lives? Has she seen her, taken a look in the windows, come up with plans for her while doing so? Is she outside now?  
  
Vanessa has to hold herself back from compulsively checking the windows. She’s going insane. She has to be. Maybe the woman is a figure of her imagination, a hallucination caused by stress and exhaustion from the campaign. The kiss a manifestation of the fact that it’s been way too fucking long since she’s gotten laid.

It has to be the answer, for Vanessa’s sanity. She clings to the idea of possible visions and a mind running wild until she walks into the office the next morning, only to see a simple, unmarked box delicately placed front and centre on top of her desk.   

She opens the lid before anyone else arrives at the office and really, she should have expected what would be inside.

It’s her gun.

* * *

Brooke accepts additional jobs as a distraction, taking the life of a loan shark, an abusive husband, and a Wall Street investor in the span of three days. The kills are fast; they’re reaffirming that she hasn’t quite lost her touch yet. Except for the fact that-

Vanessa remains alive. 

It’s not that she’s _avoiding_ the job, per se. She can’t do that, not with the deadline over her head that inches closer by the day. She’s aware of the consequences if she doesn’t get it done in time; she’s not stupid. The only thing that is stopping her is a twisted feeling spreading out from her chest, one of...regret? Nerves? Anticipation? She can’t quite place it.

It could just be indigestion.

She shouldn’t have taken the hit on Vanessa in the first place. It’s caused her nothing but trouble.

The fact that she fucking _kissed_ her has nothing to do with it. Though it had been a nice, theatrical touch as she knocked Vanessa out with classic pressure points. Besides, Vanessa had kissed back, had met her with equal hunger before she passed out in her arms.

Brooke had a feeling that Vanessa wasn’t straight. She’s more than delighted to have been proven right.  

She wonders what it would be like if she met Vanessa at a club, if she danced with her and pulled her closer, hands gripping her hips all without knowing her name. If she got to take her home, press kisses up her body and overwhelm her senses and make her scream.

She imagines Vanessa sated in her bed like all her past conquests. The way they headed out in the morning in a daze after leaving their numbers on the back of a receipt for Brooke to inevitably crumple up and throw in the trash. Not that Brooke would toss out Vanessa’s number, if they met that way. Not someone like her.

Vanessa’s gone from dominating Brooke’s thoughts over how to kill her to how she’d like to make her come over and over again. Vanessa infiltrates her dreams, her unconscious conjuring up scenarios of Vanessa falling apart beneath her hands. The dreams are enough to wake Brooke up, heart racing and her hand travelling between her own legs to take care of the problem, coming with a gasp and Vanessa’s name on her lips.

Again, probably indigestion. Nothing serious.

Vanessa staining her thoughts like ink makes Brooke wonder about how she’s faring, in the aftermath of waking up in the alley on her own. Does she remember anything? Is she thinking about the kiss, the way she melted into it? The gasp that had left her lips when Brooke had pressed hers against them?

She sits on her bed, turning Vanessa’s gun over in her hands. It’s a semi automatic 9 mm pistol, not unlike the ones that Brooke used in her days before her assortment of rifles. She imagines Vanessa’s hands wrapped around it, pulling the trigger, absorbing the recoil with her tiny frame. Wonders if Vanessa has ever used it.

Brooke wipes the gun clean, places it back in Vanessa’s office for her to find the next morning. She has manners, after all. She’s courteous. She wonders what Vanessa’s reaction will be when she opens the box, and wishes she could be a fly on the wall for the moment.  

Vanessa’s on her mind, sure. Brooke wants to make sure that the reverse is equally as true. It’s only fair.

The days until the deadline fall one after the other like playing cards. Brooke counts them down one by one every morning as she wakes up.

She kills a handsy CEO for a secretary with bruises on her neck and a shaking frame for whom she waives half of her fee. She watches the blood pool as she packs up, and tries not to think about how soon she’ll do the same thing to Vanessa.

Refusing to deal with her inevitable hit on Vanessa has made her scarily efficient at her job, having taken more hits in the last five days than she has in months. She has two days to go. Two days before she absolutely has to put a bullet in her head. She still hasn’t figured out how to get herself to do it.

Brooke stumbles into her own apartment after departing the CEO’s penthouse, having left him slumped in an armchair for his mistress to find. She leans her rifle case and gear against the nearest wall, to be dealt with and put away after a bath and a stiff drink, when the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, start to prickle.

Something isn’t right.

A peek out of the corner of her eye reveals nothing - no movement, nothing suspicious. And yet-

Brooke pulls her tiny revolver for such situations out of her coat pocket as swiftly as she can. Though not fast enough.

The smell of cheap cologne overwhelms her senses. An arm snakes around her neck, grip too tight to slip out of, while the cold barrel of a gun presses to her temple and scratches at her skin.

She supposes the bath will have to wait.

* * *

 The private detective’s voice is antsy on the other end of the phone. “I have good news and bad news."

“Bad news?”  
  
“No prints on the gun. Wiped clean.”

Damn. Of course the bitch had been careful. Vanessa half expected that answer, but she still had some _hope._

Vanessa sighs. “Good news?”

“Think I found your girl.”

She nearly drops the phone and screeches. “Why the hell didn’t you start with that, then?”

The private detective sends her an encrypted email after they hang up, one which she clicks breathlessly. Fuck. She doesn’t know how he did it, but a photo of the woman’s face fills her computer screen and goddamnit, the private detective has found her.

She scans the bullet points sent over by the private detective. Brooke Lynn Hytes. 33 years old. Last employment at the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. Previously held the rank of Detective I, Robbery-Homicide Unit. Honourable discharge, four years ago.

The photo of the woman - of _Brooke -_ makes her shiver. Her blue eyes stare through the screen and right into her soul the way they did before Brooke had kissed her, had made everything in her mind slip away including her own name. Brooke’s facial expression in the photo is a perfect mask, leaving it impossible to decipher what she was thinking, what she was feeling underneath her sculpted features.

Vanessa clicks the next file and it’s Brooke again, but her face is less closed off, less cold. Her eyes are alight with dreams and possibilities and promises for the future as she poses in her immaculately pressed police uniform. She looks so young, so hopeful, and Vanessa wants to reach into the screen and ask her what on earth happened to change that.

She’s about to Google ‘Brooke Lynn Hytes’ and reverse search the two images when a dull _thud_ shakes the frame of her front door, making her nearly spill the contents popcorn bowl on her lap onto the couch. She drops it on the coffee table, eyes turned towards the door.

The noise is followed by...silence. She waits, bated breath, hands twisting on her lap (maybe it was just someone walking by in the hallway, hitting their bag against the door in passing), when she hears a rustle. Followed by a fist banging three times on the door.

Peeking through the peephole proves to be a very, very bad idea. As does opening the door for a certain blonde to stumble in, clutching a shoulder with a rapidly spreading bloodstain. Brooke.

In the flesh. In her apartment. Which Vanessa lets her into.

Vanessa can admit that she doesn’t make good decisions.

Vanessa tugs Brooke inside, shutting the door behind her. She tries to maneuver her to the couch and grabs her first aid kit from the kitchen on the way, ignoring the rational part of her brain that is yelling at her for disregarding any aspect of safety. Tries to ignore the small, small part of her that is thinking about what other things Brooke can do to her in her apartment concerning the sensation between her thighs. Though maybe when she’s not bleeding.

Brooke’s voice comes out in a groan as she sits down. “You need to go. From here.”

Vanessa pushes the thoughts away, puts them in a box and brushes the hair from Brooke’s shoulder, trying not to flinch when her fingers come back painted with blood. “What does that mean? What are you talking about?”

“There’s people after you. Well, other than me.” Brooke gives a curious look when Vanessa unbuttons the top of her shirt. “Trying to undress me already?”

Vanessa scoffs. “Hold still, bitch. You’re bleeding on my furniture.” She presses gauze onto the area, ignoring the hiss from Brooke. “And I knew you were up to something.”

Brooke gives her a pained smile. “The knocking out didn’t tell you that?”

“Shut up.” She’s _bantering_ with her. With Brooke. Who is currently giving her couch (and Vanessa’s clothes) some blood red accents. Who had made her pass out the last time that they were in close physical proximity. All in all, a completely normal situation.

She can’t think about it too long or she will most definitely implode. 

“Listen, though.” Brooke’s hands bat her fingers away from the gauze, her face insistent and slightly dazed. “You need to go. We need to go.”

“Why should I listen to you?” Vanessa may be incredibly idiotic, but she’s also stubborn and thorough. Something she’s proud of. The strong makings of any politician.

“You-” Brooke grimaces. “-have enemies. Who hire people like me to take care of things. You need to-”

“Stop moving.” Vanessa pushes an agitated Brooke back onto the couch. “My office blew up a few weeks ago. So, no shit. You were _there._ ” Vanessa narrows her eyes at her while grabbing another piece of gauze.

“You’re welcome, by the way. For saving your life. Least I could do. Also the opposite of my job description.”

Vanessa looks at her sharply, as the alarm bells that have been ringing in her head for the last few weeks get louder. “Someone hired you to kill me?”

Brooke makes a clicking sound with her tongue, lets out a small huff of laugher. “Bingo.”

“But…” Vanessa’s brow furrows. The news isn’t necessarily a shock, it doesn’t knock her over in the way she expected it to. It’s not like she didn’t have an idea. Brooke has shown up in too many places, been around too much for it to be a coincidence. But even with confirmation, how come Brooke hasn’t- 

“You’re still alive, yeah. Though others are coming to finish the job, you’re going to die if we stay here so can we _please_ -”

The door bangs open once more and in an instant Brooke is shoving her hand away, stumbling to maneuver herself in front of Vanessa like a shield and dropping a protective hand over her thigh. She pulls out a revolver from her coat in seconds, pointing it at the door.  
  
If Vanessa wasn’t terrified for her life, she has to admit that she would be turned on.  

“What the hell?” Vanessa peeks from behind Brooke’s shoulder and sees two men, guns of their own cocked and ready and slowly approaching the couch. She hears Brooke let out a growl, low and deep in her throat, tries to ignore how it makes her shiver, not from fear.

“I should have just fucking killed you when I had the chance.”

“And instead you led us to our second planned stop.” The man who responds is _smirking_ and Vanessa can feel Brooke tense, her grip on Vanessa’s thigh tightening. “What a coincidence. Now we can get rid of both of you at once.”

Brooke is off of Vanessa before she can take a breath, a flash of platinum and metal and thuds on the ground that echo like pinballs and the men are slumped on the floor, groaning.

Two shots, one after the other reverberate in the small apartment. Vanessa’s ears ring as her eyes refuse to register the sight of Brooke standing over two dead bodies.

Brook takes a deep breath, looks up at her, eyes wilder than she’s ever seen, the calm facade beginning to slip away. Vanessa can’t help the word that falls from her lips.

“Fuck.”


	5. chapter five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Already on chapter five. I haven't written a multichapter fic in ages though am enjoying writing this one so much. Thank you for reading so far. Also thank you to writ for betaing this and being a great cheerleader and also for laughing at my attempts to write while inebriated the other night.

Brooke takes the emotions running through her veins _(panic, anger, vengeance)_ that threaten to blow her apart and packs them up, storing them on top of one another in the deep recesses of her mind for safekeeping. She composes herself, lets the mask of calm fall back onto her face.

But it’s too late. The damage is already done.

Vanessa is looking at her with wide eyes that flit between her and the bodies on the ground. Brooke sees the gears turning in her mind, the way she’s trying to look for an escape route. As if Brooke is going to kill her next.

“Someone’s probably called 911 already, with the sound of the shots.” Brooke’s voice comes out quieter than intended. “It won't take long for police to show up at your door.”

“Well, what do you suppose we do, then? Considering...this.” Vanessa gestures to the slumped figures for good measure, as if they’re not the current centrepiece of the room. Brooke has to give it to her - she’s relatively calm. Though Brooke can still see the tremble in her hands.

Brooke’s answer spills from her mouth before she can rein it in. “They were going to kill you. I had to.” Damn it. 

Vanessa looks at her with a burning curiosity, words balanced on the tip of her tongue that she looks like she so desperately wants to say. It makes Brooke want to look away, to run from her gaze, to just get away from Vanessa and the way that she’s completely flipped Brooke’s tendencies and ability to stay in control.

She’s not used to this.

As Brooke wilts, her mind a spread of flower petals that are drying out from being too exposed to the sun, Vanessa seems to grow bolder, less afraid of pressing Brooke. “But _why?_ If you have - had - the same goal. Shit.”

“Who knows, maybe I just want the money for myself.” Brooke’s voice is wry.   
  
Vanessa scoffs. “Sure.” She shakes her head, letting out a slightly incredulous laugh. “The fact that I’m even talking about this with you right now is an indicator of how absolutely insane this is.”

Brooke can’t argue with that. She did just, after all, save Vanessa’s life. Again. It’s starting to become a pattern.

She ignores the fact that she’d do it again, too. She’d save Vanessa’s life a million times if it meant that she was okay.

She’s so completely, utterly, screwed. Vanessa has turned her into someone unrecognizable.

The sound of a distant siren floats in through the open window - most likely heading in the opposite direction, nothing to do with them (or the carnage that Brooke has created), but it’s enough to make Vanessa’s head snap up and look at her in panic.

“They’re _dead,_ they’re on my floor, what if the police come here what if they send me to fucking prison because there’s dead bodies on my floor, they tried to kill me, _fuck-_ ” Vanessa’s voice comes out in short bursts, punctuated by sharp breaths that strain her lungs. Her hair falls in her face and her hands come up to blindly push the locks back.  

“Hey.“ Brooke rests on Vanessa’s shoulders to steady her, ground the trembling that’s taking over her body. Tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “Breathe.”

“I’m not going to fucking breathe right now.” Sassy. Vanessa’s sassy when she’s angry. Brooke likes it.

“Listen, I know how to make things disappear. I know people. I can fix it, make it go away and make it lead far away from you.” Vanessa finally, finally, looks up at her, letting out a ragged breath. “Make it seem like a coincidence, that it was your apartment.”

She can. She can call Yvie and figure something out and talk with her connections at the precinct and-

Keep Vanessa away from it all.

Brooke continues on. “But we can’t be here. Come with me. I can get you out of here before they reach us. You don’t have to, it’s up to you. But if someone comes after you again, I can keep you safe.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to trust you?” Vanessa’s voice is scratchy, breaking on her last word.

Brooke shrugs. “You can’t. I don’t expect you to.”

She can’t. She doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing, either. She’s never done this before, never gotten attached to a target, never wanted to save the life of a target. But she’s damn going to try.

“I have a campaign, I have two appearances tomorrow and a debate in three days and way too many interviews - I can’t drop them.” Vanessa pulls away, starts to pace, wearing holes into the squeaking wooden planks of the floor. Brooke can see her mind spinning with each step she takes.

“They’re going to keep sending people. These two-” Brooke points at the bodies. “-were disposable. They’ll send more.”

“This is insane. I don’t even know who it is that’s trying to kill me! Well. Aside from you.”

Brooke knows that it isn’t the time for humour, but she can’t help it. “Uncalled for. You haven’t died by my hand yet, have you?”

Vanessa narrows her eyes at her, points a finger in her direction. “Don’t you start with me.”

There’s another set of sirens, closer this time. Vanessa’s eyes are wide, panic growing behind her irises as she tries to search Brooke’s face for an answer.

“I can figure out who sent them. We can figure out who sent them. Stop them from sending more. But not here. Come with me or not, but you need to leave this apartment _now._ ” Brooke tries not to make the words sound too urgent, she really does. Doesn’t want to make Vanessa combust. But it _is_ urgent.

A stream of curse words tumble from Vanessa’s mouth, and Brooke watches as she crouches down to the ground and puts her head in her hands.

Then she’s up. Stalking to her bedroom, opening her closet door, pulling out two sweaters. She throws one at Brooke. “Change into this. Your current shirt looks like a fucking murder scene.”

“Well, it sort of is-”

“Do _not._ ” Vanessa changes her own shirt, her body seeming to calm down once she has no visible evidence of blood spatters on her. She then pulls out more gauze from the first aid on the couch, bringing it to Brooke.

Brooke’s eyes study her face as Vanessa tugs her shirt off, watches how Vanessa flinches at the blood soaked gauze. How she switches it for fresh gauze with shaking fingers, how she seems to be consciously trying to keep herself from looking anywhere other than Brooke’s shoulder.

Vanessa tugs the sweater over Brooke’s head, hiding the gauze. Lifts her hair out from underneath the collar, smoothes it over her other shoulder. When Vanessa is done she steps back, turning on her heel to pick up the gun from her counter. She tucks it into her own sweater pocket.

Brooke waits (ignoring the sirens getting louder, more inevitable), watches as something seems to click into place on Vanessa’s face. The fear in her eyes is still there, but an armour of resolve and steel is in front of them, like a shield. Vanessa’s regards her with a challenge when she shrugs her shoulders, as if she’s the one waiting for Brooke.

“Well? Are we going or not?”

* * *

Vanessa has to be insane. There’s no other explanation. It’s the only one that makes sense in her head, that can begin to rationalize why she’s agreed to go with Brooke to wherever it is that she’s planning on taking her.

She leans back against the plush passenger seat of the black SUV, peeking through the layers of her hair to look at the woman beside her. Brooke’s hands grip the steering wheel with enough force that her fingers turn white. Her face is fighting to hold onto the mask of indifference it is wearing, emotions flitting by her eyes and disappearing faster than Vanessa can decipher what they are.

Vanessa figures it’s a time as good as any to grill her. To find out a bit more about her while her hands are busy. She’s already come this far.

“So. Brooke Lynn Hytes.” She tests out the name, the way it feels unfamiliar on her lips. It still feels odd to put a name to the woman who has taken over all of the free space in her mind, refusing to let her focus on anything else. Knowing her name makes her think of Brooke as less of a mysterious entity and more of a person, with her own brain and heart and soul.  

Brooke looks over sharply mere milliseconds after her name leaves Vanessa, tearing her eyes away from the road. “Excuse me?”

“That’s your name, ain’t it?” Vanessa lifts one of her legs up onto the dashboard of the car, sinks down into the seat. She ignores the fact that Brooke is the one driving, and very well could make them crash at any second - she’s enjoying this, provoking her.

It’s not like she has any sense of self preservation left, anyway. That had disappeared the very first time she met Brooke outside her old office. When she’d spilled coffee on her and thought she had been just another passerby. The precise moment that Brooke had started occupying her thoughts more than the campaign, and never did stop.

Brooke swallows hard and trains her eyes back on the road, fingers tapping on the steering wheel with movements too erratic to be considered a pattern. “How do you know that?”

“Did you think you were the only one who did some sleuthing? C’mon, you should know better than that.” Vanessa takes a twisted delight in the fact that now she’s the one who gets to make Brooke squirm, after being left unsettled by her for so long.

Brooke doesn’t answer, so Vanessa continues on. “Read a little about you. Police, huh? No wonder you know your way around a gun.”

She sees Brooke’s eyes darken, sees the hard set of her face. “Don’t.”

“What lead to that honourable discharge? Public sector not pay you enough?”

Brooke’s voice is a growl. “Vanessa...”

“Fine, fine.” Vanessa raises her hand in mock surrender. “Touchy. Just want to learn a bit about you, is all. Being partners in crime and all that.”

Despite the storm clouds brewing in between them, Brooke scoffs. “You’re not part of this.”

“How the hell are you gonna get me out of it, then? It was in _my_ apartment.” She really does want to know. Brooke had waxed poetic about making everything disappear, of taking care of everything. Vanessa wonders how she’s actually going to make it happen.

“I know the right people. You’ll be back on the campaign trail in no time.”

“You seem real determined to get me there. Which is interesting, considering that you had full plans to kill me, didn’t you?” She watches Brooke’s face for a reaction, anything, but Brooke doesn’t take the bait, only lifting an eyebrow in response while keeping her eyes on the road.

Vanessa knows she should be scared, if it’s true. The way Brooke knocked her out with ease, left her to wake up alone in an alley isn’t far from her mind. But neither is the way that Brooke shielded her body from the explosion of her office. Brooke, injured, flinging herself in front of Vanessa and then taking down the men that came after her. Brooke is a kaleidoscope with a million different facets, unique parts that come together to form a picture that is forever changing.

Vanessa trusts too easily. She knows that she has an open heart, always has. She’s survived situations that it has gotten her into, bad exes and less than stellar circumstances, and hasn’t closed off the door to her soul yet. She wants to see the best in people, wants to believe that they’re inherently good until they prove otherwise. It’s why she got into politics, and why the profession hasn’t made her cynical in the way that it has her colleagues, where distaste and weariness is forever etched onto their faces and is responsible for the slump in their bones.

It’s what makes her think twice about Brooke, and want to push away the voices in her head that tug and whisper at her _(she wants to kill you, she was hired to kill you)_ and focus on the fact that she’s saved her life twice.

Twice.

It has to mean something.

The evening sets in as they drive further and further, leaving DC behind as a sign on the freeway welcomes them to Virginia. The deep fog and overcast skies create a bleak backdrop, making the air feel heavy over their heads and giving the lights that line the roads an eerie glow. Brooke pulls off the freeway and onto a trail leading into the thick forest as the sky turns dark, lights disappearing along with the road behind them.

Vanessa can feel the precise moment that her heartbeat speeds up, the sudden whooshing in her ears overwhelming the rest of her senses. Huh. Maybe Brooke _is_ going to kill her. Just in the deep forest where no one will find her body.

As Vanessa’s mind starts to go off on tangents, branches that concoct endless scenarios of how Brooke could possibly dismantle and hide her body, Brooke speaks. “We’re going to my friend Nina’s cabin. Well, her late husband’s cabin. Used to be his, now it’s hers. She said we can lie low here for a bit.”

They drive until the SUV’s front beams shine their lights onto a wooden cabin nestled amongst the trees, one that Vanessa would have missed had they not stopped. It’s small but feels welcoming, not activating her fight or flight response the way empty cabins in the woods normally would. A blessing, at least. If she dies, she’ll die in a quaint cottage and go out feeling warm and comfortable.

The inside of the cabin matches the exterior, the wooden surfaces illuminated in soft oranges from the overhead light that flickers after years of non-usage. Vanessa sinks down onto a nearby couch, the plush blanket and throw pillows making her want to never get up again. She feels exhausted, despite the fact that they’ve been sitting for the last few hours during the car ride.

Brooke drops her bags beside her, rifling through one to pull out the burner phones that they bought at a gas station on the way. She hands one to Vanessa.

“One call.”

When they had started to drive, Brooke had instructed Vanessa to put her cellphone on airplane mode, explaining through her very vocal protests _(‘You really are tryna kill me, huh?’)_ that their phones could be tracked, that they could lead those after Vanessa right to them. Brooke had refuted her arguments that burner phones aren’t hackerproof, that they’re equally as traceable.

“I’ve had to disappear before. Trust me, they’re a safer option.”

Vanessa can’t really argue with that. She takes the phone, ignores the upturn of Brooke’s lip. Any cell phone is better than none.

She’s known Silky’s number since college, dialing and shoving the phone to her ear in seconds. Silky picks up her call before the first ring even finishes.

“Sil-”

“Where the _fuck-_ ”

“I can exp-”

“Dead bodies-”

“No that’s a lie, I can’t really-”

“I need an explanation.”

Vanessa lets out a breath. “They tried to kill me, Silky.”

Silky’s voice cuts through on the other end of the phone. “So you killed them instead? Damn. Ice cold. And inconvenient from a PR standpoint.”

“What? No, not me.” She pulls the phone back from her ear, gives it a look as if Silky could see it on the other end.

“Not that blonde chick-”

“She saved my life.” Vanessa’s voice is quiet, a whisper as she brings the phone back to her ear. “Again.”

“Bitch, tell me that you’re having a crisis or a break or something. That this is not happening and that you’re _not_ with some sort of killer queen bitch.”

“No. She’s real.” Vanessa looks up, sees Brooke coming out of the kitchen with her own burner phone pressed to her ear. She’s shed her jacket and is still in the sweater that Vanessa gave her. One that Vanessa never wears because it falls off of her frame but seems to fit Brooke perfectly. Brooke looks so much more vulnerable, the sharp angles of her leather jacket and boots having vanished and left in their place a soft creature who curls up on the couch and tucks her feet underneath her.

“Where are you?” Silky’s question startles her, makes her aware of her surroundings other than Brooke. It doesn’t last for long, her eyes continuing to flit back towards Brooke and the way she’s running her fingers through her hair.  

She feels stupid mumbling her answer. “I don’t know.”

Silky’s voice jumps approximately three octaves in response. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I don’t know, Silky! Some sort of safehouse or some shit.”

“Who-” Silky’s voice cuts off as she takes a deep breath. A long, deep breath. “You’re not with her, are you?”

Her. Brooke, who is biting her lip as she scribbles something down in a notebook. Who tucks a lock of hair that keeps falling forward behind her ear.

“Who’s her?” Vanessa winces at her own response, knowing Silky won’t fall for the feigned ignorance.

“You know exactly who, cut the shit.” Ah. There it is.

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

Vanessa doesn’t. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, how she ended up here. How she’s in a quaint cabin when she should really be preparing for the appearances that Ra’jah has scheduled for her the next day and how there’s absolutely _no_ way she can go back to DC with her tail between her legs when there’s two dead bodies in her apartment.

Two dead bodies that have probably been found by now. Surrounded by police and forensic scientists in her apartment, trying to find out where she is, who the men are, who killed them.

Fuck. She’s so screwed. She can’t go back, not right now, not when there’s a bounty over her head and possibly police looking for her too.

Vanessa hangs up on Silky while she’s rambling on about Stockholm Syndrome and the warning signs, presses the _end_ button with mumbled words ( _‘I’m okay, I promise, don’t worry about me’_ ), letting the phone fall into her lap and resting her head in her hands.

Things were normal, a few weeks ago. They really were. She had been on the campaign trail, sipping lattes that were too expensive and walking in shoes that pinched at her heels but made her six inches taller. She had been in control, comfortable while on top of her game.

How did she end up here?

She hears Brooke hang up on her own phone, hears the rustle as she drops her notebook onto the coffee table. Watches as Brooke comes and sits beside her, hesitant in her movements for the first time that Vanessa’s ever seen. As if she’s waiting for Vanessa’s reaction. Waiting for her to run.

She doesn’t run when Brooke sits down, shuffles closer to her. She doesn’t run when Brooke’s arm brushes against her own. She doesn’t run when Brooke intertwines their fingers, looking at her with blue eyes that reflect ocean waves rather than ice, waves that somehow help to ground her, bring her back to shore.

She doesn’t run. She stays.


	6. chapter six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What stopped you?” Vanessa’s question comes out in a whisper.
> 
> Brooke doesn’t need to turn around to feel her come closer, take a step forward, the heat that normally exists between them growing and burning against her shoulders and her back. Vanessa’s gentle hand on her shoulder is practically a burn, alight with flames licking and blistering at her skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the rating change with this chapter! Eternally grateful to @writworm42 and @beanierose for being so wonderful and encouraging and for beta-ing. I appreciate you both so much.

Brooke sets up a makeshift board on one of the wooden walls in the living room of the cabin, spreading out a timeline of the past few weeks along with information about everyone involved. She finds a ball of yarn from the summer that Nina was determined to learn how to knit in one of the bedroom closets and uses it to join the different players together, to work through various hypotheses in her mind.

It helps her, the methodical process. It calms her down and lets her organize her thoughts, to sort out exactly what has happened. To figure out where they can go from here.

Vanessa watches from her spot on the couch, where she’s curled up under a blanket with a mug of tea in her hands. The sleeves of the oversized sweater that she found in one of the closets _(‘It smells like detergent, it’s clean, imma take it’)_ are rolled up to fit her small frame.

Her eyes are wide as she listens to Brooke’s explanations as she puts everything up on the wall, telling her about the past few weeks from her perspective. Brooke can’t help the question that falls from her lips next, can’t hold back when she sees the way that Vanessa swallows as she explains how close she came to death by her hand.

“Are you afraid of me?”

Vanessa’s answer comes after a long sip of tea, and a gaze that takes Brooke in, doesn’t waver.

“No.”

Brooke expected the answer. She likes it. Even though it means Vanessa clearly has no concern for her own personal safety. “Maybe you should be.”

“Chica, if you’d have wanted to kill me by now, you would have done so already.” Vanessa raises an eyebrow, a challenge.

Brooke doesn’t want to tell Vanessa that she’s completely right.

She doesn’t get these political types, sometimes. The way that they seem to be self-assured to the point of absolute insanity. The way that they refuse to back down on their opinions if they believe in them hard enough.

Vanessa looks at her like she’s a puzzle that she wants to solve, like she’s determined to unravel her no matter the cost to her own self. Brooke isn’t sure whether she wants to save her from the edge of the cliff that she’s near or join her in going over the brink.

It’s refreshing, finding someone who wants to step up to her level. Doesn’t happen much in her line of work. Brooke hasn’t experienced _anything_ like Vanessa before. She’s no longer her prey; she’s challenging her and pushing her in ways that she’s never experienced.

If Brooke were to let go of the iron grip that she has on her own brain, the way that she forces herself to only think about ways that they can survive and get through this unscathed, she knows that she would spiral. About her own abilities, about how Vanessa has completely dismantled the dangerous yet efficient life that she’s crafted for herself. How Vanessa seems to _know_ it too.

Instead, she turns back to the board.

Brooke scrawls the name of a prominent Republican congressman and sticks it beside her own on the wall. She turns toward Vanessa, whose furrowed brow tells her exactly what she thinks of the man.

“He hired me.” Brooke doesn’t know how to handle the current uncharted territory, with all the shit that has happened. She may as well be transparent at this point.

Vanessa’s lips are pursed as she stands up, comes up beside Brooke. Looks at the name, then up at her. “Somehow, not surprised.”

Unexpected. Brooke raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“I caused a stir about that bill he was lobbying to pass last month. Also called him a ‘shitstain on this earth’ to his face when it got passed.” Vanessa tries to hold back a smile at the memory.

“Jesus.” Brooke shakes her head. She can picture Vanessa barely coming up to the man’s shoulder, yelling in his face louder than anyone has ever dared to at a while male politician. “You’re fiery, aren’t you?”

“It helped that someone was filming it and it went viral on Twitter. The support for him dropped ridiculously fast, while I gained some points in the prediction polls.” Vanessa’s public voice, her politician voice shines through for the first time since Brooke ran into her when they met, when she saved her from the explosion of her office. When Vanessa didn’t know who she was and thought she was a random member of the public.

Vanessa is good at pulling out her charming, public persona. At gaining the hearts of the adoring population that doesn’t turn their backs on her when she occasionally slips up and explodes at those who cross her.

Brooke thinks back to watching the news when it had happened, before she had even met her. How the newscasters said that Vanessa was truly for the people. How it had only made her more loved by the general public.

“Weren’t you worried that crossing him would come back to bite you?” Brooke asks her because _she_ wonders. She’s so used to calculating each of her actions, weighing the risks and benefits and taking a step forward only after confirming that she’s making the best choice.

Vanessa shrugs. “He always steamrolls anyone in his way. He wasn’t used to someone stepping in his face for once. No one ever fuckin’ does. I had to.”

Vanessa is Brooke’s antithesis; a woman so driven by her heart and what she feels is the right choice not only for herself, but for everyone else as well. For those who could be hurt by policies that they have no ability to change. Ones that Vanessa fights because she has the ability to do so, no matter the cost.

Even though the cost was almost that of her life.

Brooke envies it, the way that Vanessa is so sure in her beliefs. The way she’s tried, really tried, to use it for good in her career. Brooke can’t say that she’s done the same.

“He nearly killed you for it.” A man so threatened by a woman questioning his authority that his solution was to take out Vanessa, and get rid of the challenger in his way.

“No bitch, _you_ nearly killed me.” Vanessa scoffs, _scoffs_ at her.

Well. It’s not like she can deny it. “Fair enough.”

“Let me ask you something. Again. Why haven’t you?” Vanessa’s gaze is striking, staring into her soul. Searching for an answer that Brooke doesn’t feel she even knows herself.

Brooke turns back to the board, away from Vanessa, though it does nothing to stop the unsaid pleading that she can feel coming from her.

“You had so many chances.” Vanessa’s voice cuts through again, softer, though still with the ability to shatter the carefully constructed excuses she’s created for herself.

She doesn’t need the money _(she does)_. She just couldn’t get a good shot _(she could, she had plenty of chances to take a killing shot)._ She didn’t have enough time _(she had more than a week)_. She would have gotten caught, with how much of a public figure Vanessa is _(she’s killed many prominent people and gotten away with it)_.

She runs a hand through her hair, the waves catching in her fingers and tugging on her scalp the same way that her heart feels like it’s being pulled in a million different directions.

“I know I did.”

“What stopped you?” Vanessa’s question comes out in a whisper.

Brooke doesn’t need to turn around to feel her come closer, take a step forward, the heat that normally exists between them growing and burning against her shoulders and her back. Vanessa’s gentle hand on her shoulder is practically a burn, alight with flames licking and blistering at her skin.

She spins, suddenly, faces Vanessa who is much closer than she realized. Vanessa’s breath hitches in her throat as she stands her ground, refusing to take a step back.

Brooke stares, really stares. Notices the way Vanessa’s head is tilted up towards her, the defiant set of her jaw. Sees the embers glowing behind Vanessa’s eyes that light her up from the inside.

“I know you feel it too. I feel you holding back.”

The words make Brooke’s eyes flutter closed, make her breaths shallower. She thinks of the dreams she’s had of Vanessa where it’s been easy, too easy, to take her to bed and overwhelm her senses in a way that makes her scream. Having her in front of her, though, pulls her back, makes her hesitant, tentative, in a way that she never expected.

Vanessa intertwines their fingers. Index, then middle, then the rest. Two cast iron gears forged apart that slot together perfectly, as if they were always meant to fit.

“Vanessa…” The growl is soft, low in her throat.

“Don’t hold back anymore, Brooke.”

She can’t. Not when Vanessa stretches up on her tiptoes, her face coming closer, closer. Vanessa’s lips brush against hers and the resulting tendrils of lightning are enough to illuminate the room. Vanessa pauses there, waits. Asking Brooke a question that she doesn’t need to use words to communicate.

Brooke answers it. A hand in Vanessa’s curls at the nape of her neck, tilting her head up. A moan that she can’t hold in any longer when Vanessa bites at her lip, hands tugging on her sweater to bring her closer. The thud of Vanessa’s back as it hits the wall when Brooke pushes her up against it. The scrawled notes that Brooke had so meticulously pinned up fluttering down to the ground around them that neither of them pay any mind to.

Brooke’s lips move to her neck, kisses that tug at the skin and make Vanessa gasp into her shoulder. Vanessa’s hands fist uselessly in her hair, her grip tightening when Brooke nips at the juncture of her neck and collarbone.

“Too warm.” The words leave Vanessa’s mouth between ragged breaths. Brooke pulls back, sees her flushed face that is most certainly mirroring her own. Vanessa’s hands play with the hem of her sweater, fingers inching it up and splaying along her sides, dragging on her ribs. Brooke pulls it over her own head then tugs off Vanessa’s in turn, the fabric barely slipping from the grasp of her fingers before Vanessa is pulling her face back down to meet hers.

The kisses are deeper, Vanessa’s mouth open and willing and it’s too much for Brooke; each one of her senses is about to short circuit, ready to take her down at any second in sparks that turn into flames. Brooke brings her hands up to cradle Vanessa’s face and Vanessa leans into her touch, soft and melting in her hands that makes Brooke never want to let her go.

Brooke’s intake of breath is sharp when they break the kiss, her lungs so desperately clawing for oxygen that she’s not sure will be of any help. Vanessa’s eyes are unfocused when she stares up at her, chest rising in uneven patterns and a tremble in her shoulders that matches the erratic beating of Brooke’s heart.

“I can’t stop thinking about this. About you. I-” Vanessa’s words are short, stilted, cut off as she reaches up to kiss Brooke again.

“Fuck.” Brooke breathes it in a gasp before covering her lips with her own once more, as if stopping means that Vanessa will disappear; they’ll disappear. That this will end up being one of the dreams that jerks her awake in bed all alone, with a heat between her legs that she can’t take care of herself no matter how hard she tries.

The smell of Vanessa’s shampoo, the way she’s burning up under Brooke’s touch, the way her hands are everywhere, palming at her breasts and gripping at her sides, remind Brooke that she’s really here.

Brooke’s hand trails along her waistband and Vanessa whimpers, her hips lifting from the wall and it’s too much, she needs to hear that sound again. Never wants to stop hearing it. She tugs on Vanessa’s leggings and helps her shimmy out of them, kicking them to the side. Brooke’s fingers tease along the waistband of her underwear, dancing along the outside and dropping lower and fuck, Vanessa’s already so wet for her through the fabric as she tries to gain any semblance of friction against her hand.

Brooke drops open-mouthed kisses onto her neck, then shoulder blades, then sternum as her fingers trace delicate patterns, trying to hold back as much as she’s able to until Vanessa is begging for it underneath her, but-

“C’mere.”

Brooke is too tall at their current angle, she’s bending down as much as she can but it’s not enough. She straightens up, a hand pulling Vanessa into the adjoining kitchen, spinning to face her. She crouches, grabs underneath Vanessa’s thighs to lift her up and onto the kitchen counter.

Vanessa lets out a noise at the coolness of the countertop against her bare skin, one that gives way to a moan when Brooke pushes her legs apart and steps in between them, trailing her hands up her inner thighs.

She feels more in control now, less like she’s going to explode at any given moment, having Vanessa in front of her like this and pliable under her hands. They’re at eye level now, making it almost too easy for Brooke to reach up and brush Vanessa’s bottom lip with her thumb and watch her eyes flutter shut. Brooke’s other hand climbs Vanessa’s thigh and traces along the edge of her underwear, still teasing and drawing out the inevitable noises that fall from her lips.

Vanessa drops her forehead onto Brooke’s shoulder when she finally, finally pushes her underwear to the side and feels the wetness that’s been soaking through the fabric. Brooke’s fingers tease at her entrance while her thumb brushes against her clit, light enough that she’s not sure if it actually does until she hears Vanessa let out a whimper against her neck.

“Please, I need-”

Vanessa’s voice is cut off in a gasp when Brooke pushes two fingers into her, feels her walls clench around them. Brooke curls them up slightly, places a kiss on Vanessa’s jaw before whispering into her ear.

“What is it, baby?”

Slender arms wrap around her as she starts to pump her fingers. Vanessa buries her face in Brooke’s neck but it does nothing to stifle the noises that spill from her mouth and make Brooke squeeze her own thighs together.

“You need to tell me what you want.”

“Harder.”

Brooke speeds up in response, her thumb moving in light circles around her clit in tandem with the curling of her fingers.

“Do you know how much I’ve thought about you? Dreamt about you falling apart like this?” The words come out soft, low. She can feel Vanessa shudder against her, arms tightening around her neck.

She twists her wrist slightly and the angle makes Vanessa’s hips buck against her, meet her in turn, curse words falling from her lips. Brooke speeds up even more as the burn in her forearm grows but she’s not stopping, not now when Vanessa is gasping her name like it’s a prayer.

Brooke punctuates the movements of her fingers with her lips on Vanessa’s neck, jaw, the lobe of her ear, wherever she can reach in their current position. She nips and teases at the skin, soothing the spots that she knows will blossom in reds and purples the next day with her tongue. Brooke can feel Vanessa tightening around her fingers, the sensations everywhere too much, too strong, as her orgasm rolls over her in waves. Vanessa buries her face in Brooke’s shoulder to muffle her scream.

Brooke fucks her through it until Vanessa’s gasps even out, then stills the motion of her fingers, placing a kiss against Vanessa’s flushed temple. Brooke’s fingers gently brush against Vanessa’s clit when she pulls them back, hypersensitivity making her whine and shudder against her.

Vanessa’s lips part as Brooke lifts her fingers towards her mouth, sucks on them until they’re clean, her tongue darting out when Brooke pulls them back. Brooke’s eyes travel over her with a hunger she can’t restrain, noticing the way that Vanessa’s chest continues to heave and how her eyes are still blown with lust.

“Good girl.”

She tilts Vanessa’s face up to hers with two fingers underneath her chin, the resulting kiss slow and languid. Her shoulder aches, the wound that had begun to heal from the graze she sustained a day previously starting to throb. It feels like it’s been torn open again underneath the layers of bandages as the adrenaline of having Vanessa fall apart beneath her begins to subside. She doesn’t care.

Vanessa pulls back, breaking the kiss, and pushes on Brooke’s uninjured shoulder so that she takes a step backward. Brooke watches as Vanessa eases herself off of the counter, still shaky on her legs as she stands to face her, look up at her. Her hands come up to ghost against Vanessa’s sides but she’s stopped, Vanessa’s hands instead grabbing both of hers as she takes a step backwards, then another. Vanessa tugs her towards the master bedroom that Brooke insisted that she take when they had first arrived, much to her protests.

“Let me take care of you. Please.”

Well. Who is she to deny that request?

Brooke leans back against the headboard, lets Vanessa straddle her and unhook the bra that she’s somehow still wearing. Lets her kiss down her chest and her ribs and nip at her hipbones and the crook of her thigh. Brooke is more than happy to oblige when Vanessa tugs on one of her legs to get her to shuffle down, to lie down properly and rest her head on the pillows. She slides off Brooke’s underwear with a practiced ease, as if she’s done it a million times before.

The kisses that Vanessa places up the inside of her thigh are electric currents, teasing her only just enough before pulling back. Vanessa looks up, _grins_ at her when she lets out a grunt in frustration.

“You all good?”

Brooke huffs. “You know exactly what you’re doing, you fucking tease.” It’s too much and not enough, she wants to just move Vanessa to where she wants her-

Her thought process cuts off when Vanessa finally, finally brings her kisses between her thighs, her tongue slowly swiping up and swirling around her clit. Brooke can’t stop herself from tugging on the locks of Vanessa’s hair that her hands have raked through and gotten hold of, her grip tight.

The resulting moan from Vanessa against her center is practically filthy. Brooke tugs again, experimentally, feels how Vanessa’s grip on her thighs tightens in response.

Interesting.

Vanessa doesn’t give her time to reflect on the discovery before resuming her motions, lapping and then sucking and she’s so close. Vanessa teases two fingers at her entrance, facing no resistance when she pushes them in, curls them up. Brooke’s thighs have a vice grip on Vanessa’s head but she can’t pull them apart, doesn’t want to, not when Vanessa is doing that.

Her hands rake through Vanessa’s hair, tug harder when Vanessa increases her pace, matching the trembling of her own body. It’s warm, too warm, she’s burning and burning but she doesn’t care, not when the explosion feels this exquisite.

She comes with Vanessa’s name on her lips, interspersed between incoherent utterances because fuck, she’s had sex but it’s never been like this, never made her truly let go.

Brooke tugs Vanessa back up, tastes herself on her mouth when she kisses her. She brushes the damp curls away from Vanessa’s face as she leans over Brooke.

“Beautiful.”

Vanessa’s lip curls up at the statement that Brooke can’t hold back. “Didn’t know all it took to make you soft was some time in the sheets.”

“Shut up.” There’s no malice in it, only a smirk back.

She’s not lying, though. The softness of Vanessa’s skin as Brooke’s fingers trace up her arm. The waves that fall in front of Vanessa’s face, mussed and messy yet intoxicating in the way that the smell of her shampoo overpowers everything else. The brightness in Vanessa’s eyes, the way she looked at her with want and need but now wears a face of…fondness? She can’t tell, but she knows enough to tell that the sex is something Vanessa will want to repeat too.

Vanessa leans into Brooke’s touch when her hand shifts to cup her face, before rolling off of her and tucking herself into her side. She lifts a hand to trace patterns across Brooke’s ribs, her touch light and following the rise and fall of Brooke’s chest.

Brooke should be afraid at how natural it feels to wrap an arm around Vanessa and pull her close. How the usual antsy feeling that bubbles in her chest when a girl stays in her bed for too long is now nowhere to be found. How instead, she’s quite content where she is, the soft smile that teases on her lips growing when she can feel Vanessa’s breathing against her get deeper. How the tracing motions of Vanessa’s fingers come to a stop, her hand going slack against Brooke’s ribs.

She’s not grasping at straws anymore for what her next move will be, how she’s going to get out of the situation in one piece with her money. She doesn’t care anymore.

She’s going to protect Vanessa with her damn life a million more times if she has to.


	7. chapter seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brooke hangs up, tosses the burner phone onto the couch beside her. Vanessa’s magazine drops from in front of her face almost comically as she turns to Brooke.
> 
> “You weren’t fooling anyone with those pretend reading skills.”
> 
> Vanessa sticks out her tongue at her. A professional, buttoned up politician. Absolutely. “I’ll have you know I learned a shit ton about commercial whaling in the 70s from this magazine.”
> 
> “Oh, have you now?” Brooke can’t help but grin in her direction, at the way that Vanessa is holding up the magazine like it’s a trophy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, this chapter has mentions of past domestic abuse and gun use. 
> 
> Thank you writ for being the best person to bounce ideas off of and a great cheerleader and beta <33
> 
> Enjoy!

_The congressman checks the burner phone every couple of minutes, trying to will the confirmation from the hitwoman to come through faster. He tosses it down onto his desk in disappointment and frustration each time, despite the fact that he had only given her the job earlier in the day._

_He just needs Vanessa Mateo gone. Sooner, rather than later. She’s a fucking thorn in his side that just won’t shut_ up _. If she has the chance to continue with her attacks on him and rile things up, he’s not going to be re-elected. And if he’s not re-elected to congress, he’ll bomb during the Republican primary. Which means he won’t reach the Oval Office, the place he_ deserves _to be-_

_He’s getting ahead of himself._

_Mateo needs to be taken out of the equation first._

_He wonders how long it’ll take the hitwoman. He’s heard a lot about her – Hytes – from colleagues, how she’s good at getting rid of messes and anyone who dares to cause a little bit of trouble. She fucking cost a shit ton of money, but he needs the best to get it done. It can’t be traced back to him, not if he wants a smooth road to the White House. It’s good that his morals have become questionable, the higher that he’s climbed the political ladder._

_He hopes that Mateo suffers a little bit, at least, when she dies. Women like her shouldn’t be able to get away with being as crass as she is. Not when it affects his congress re-election campaign. Especially when she’s not even_ in _Congress yet. Just a woman who is getting way too ahead of herself – a small fish in a big pond._

_He, on the other hand, runs the pond. It needs to stay that way._

_There’s a series of bangs on his office door, making him clutch the phone tighter. Hytes couldn’t have killed her already. Could she have?_

_The congressman exchanges a look with his bodyguard, whose expression of confusion on his features matches his. The guard creeps near the door, opening it slowly with a gun ready to fire if needed._

_It’s not Hytes. The men who walk in are a bit too grimy for his taste, leather jackets that smell of cigarettes with bruises and scars that mar their faces. The congressman holds back judgment. God knows he’s dealt with shadier types during his time in politics. Following all the rules doesn’t exactly get you far._

_The man at the front of the group regards the congressman with a tilt of his head. Staring him down. The congressman raises an eyebrow, waits. He’s not the type to play into theatrics, especially from those who enter his office unannounced._

_When the man opens his mouth to speak, the voice that comes out is raspy, evident of lungs tainted by years of nicotine. “A little birdy told me you hired a blonde supermodel to kill for you.”_

_How did this man already know? The congressman only hired Hytes today-_

_The man snorts at his expression, one that he knows is doing nothing to hide his surprise. “Word travels fast.”_

_“What exactly do you want?” He’s not going to put up with some lowlife traipsing into his office and wasting his time. Not when he has more important shit to do._

_“Got a proposition for you, congressman.” The man’s hands come to rest on his desk as he leans forward. A bit too forward, into the congressman’s personal bubble. Why hasn’t his bodyguard pulled this man back yet?_

_Nonetheless, he wants to know. “Go on.”_

_“You want to get rid of a woman. So do I. What say you we team up?”_

_He scoffs at the man’s smirk. Who did he think he was? “Number one – too vague. Number two – what’s in it for me?”_

_The man leans forward, tapping his fingers on the desk. The congressman’s nose wrinkles. “Let me finish talking, first of all. You want Vanessa Mateo out of the picture. I want Brooke Lynn Hytes gone.”_

_Wait – “The assassin?”_

_“No, the famous journalist. Yes, the assassin. Who else?”_

_The congressman’s brow furrows. “She needs to get rid of Mateo for me.”_

_The man looks at him as if he’s five years old. The congressman wants to smack the condescending look off of his face. “Let me spell it out for you. We can kill her for half of the price that you’re paying Hytes. We’re gonna let Hytes take the blame for it, get caught. You get what you want for cheaper, we get what we want at the same time.”_

_“What do you have against Hytes?” The congressman can’t help his question. He’s curious._

_“She gets her nose into places where she shouldn’t. Taken some of the hits that would normally come to us. Killed a few of ours under the guise of a job. A fucking annoying bitch that won’t go away.”_

_The congressman raises an eyebrow. “There’s politics in hitman circles too, huh?”_

_“We stay out of each other’s way. Except for her. She needs to go.”_

_So. The man and his crew are invested too. The congressman doesn’t really care to know much more about them, but having leverage? Knowing what they want out of the situation? Priceless._

_“Half price, huh?”_

_The man snorts. “Knew those would be the only words you’d care about. You’re all the fucking same.”_

_The congressman shrugs. “Would prefer not paying a shit ton of money to Hytes, that’s for sure. How do I know you won’t be able to link your killing back to me?”_

_He has that assurance from Hytes, from her history. From testimonials from others about her…excellent performance on the job.  He doesn’t know shit about these people._

_“What, you want a reference or some shit?”_

_The congressman ignores the tittering from the man and the people behind him, leans forward. “No. Just collateral.”_

_“Go on.”_

_“You get the money after you kill her._ And _after Hytes takes the blame for it. To ensure that it doesn’t come back to me.”_

_The man grins at him. Sticks out a hand to shake. “You have a deal.”_

* * *

 

"There’s a couple of leads around the men – who they are, who hired them. None so far as to who killed them.” Yvie’s voice on the burner phone is scratchy, far away, the service at the cabin less than stellar.

Brooke lets out a sigh of relief. “No suspects?”

“Not as of yet. You’re good, girl.”

“Thank fuck.” Not that Brooke cares much about herself being pursued by police; she’d be able to outsmart them. She knows how they work. 

Brooke is more worried about the woman sitting across from her on the couch. The one who is feigning reading an old issue of _Reader’s Digest_ from 1996 that she’s taken from the coffee table, but is most definitely listening in on her conversation. The one whose lips had brushed against hers moments before the phone had rang, a promise of activities to be resumed at a later time. 

Brooke doesn’t want Vanessa to be trapped in this mess. Sue her. 

“What’s their plan going forward?”

“Edwards is the main lead on the case, so my knowledge is just what I’ve overheard in the bullpen and around the tasks she’s relegated to me to do. I know they were trying to trace the bullets you shot with. No leads around that.” 

Brooke’s lip curls up. There never are any. Not when she scrapes manufacturer information off of the bullet casings herself before using them.

Yvie continues, the sound of her flipping through paper notes audible on the other end of the phone. “They have that congressman as a person of interest, but no luck linking him in a concrete manner to the case yet. Or to Vanessa Mateo’s office explosion. Any developments on your end?”

“None.” Brooke grits her teeth, running her fingers through her hair. “The only concrete evidence I have is that he fucking hired me. Not that _that_ can be useful to anyone on the case in a way that doesn’t implicate me.”

“You’re really in it now, huh?” Yvie’s laugh on the other end is wry, though infectious.

“Am I ever not?”

“True. You’re a fucking mess, but I love you anyway.”

Brooke fights off a smile. “You better, after so many years of friendship. And so much grunt work as uniform cops.

“And me saving your ass time and time again.”

“That, you absolutely have.” Brooke can’t deny it. 

She’s lucky that she has Yvie. That she _still_ has Yvie, after so many changes in her life. Someone who has stayed a ride or die friend for her, despite everything that she’s done. Someone who has tipped her off whenever police have been closing in on her. Someone who’s let her stay one step ahead of the authorities.

Sometimes she thinks she doesn’t deserve it, not really. A semi support system. Though she’d never want to give it up.

It’s not like she doesn’t help Yvie, giving her leads that she’s picked up from the circles that she runs in. She’s helped pull cases together from afar more than once.

She wonders, sometimes, what it would be like if she was still a detective. She hasn’t lost the aptitude for it, using the skills now still while researching targets. Police training doesn’t get scrubbed from the memory that quickly, not when it’s etched into the brain with what feels like a dull knife.

“So.” Yvie’s voice is all business again. “Vanessa Mateo still with you?”

Brooke looks over to the topic of their conversation, who has switched over to a _National Geographic_ from the 1970s. One that Vanessa is absolutely holding upside down as she tries to listen in. Subtle.

“Yeah.” Still alive. Hopefully will remain alive, if Brooke has anything to do about it.

“God, you’re really something else. Always knew it would take just the right pretty girl to get you to fall over yourself.”

“Oh, shut up, Yvie.”

Yvie’s resulting cackle on the other end of the line makes her own face break out into a smile, even though she has to hold the phone away from her ear due to the volume. It’s not like she can even deny how Vanessa has completely fucked up her usual goals, usual demeanor and ability to get things done. How Vanessa has completely shifted Brooke’s priorities by just daring to exist in proximity to her.   

“Talked to her team a few days ago." 

“Yeah?” Brooke perks up. She wonders if it would be helpful to bring them onto the same page, have them work together.

“Her publicist still maintains that she has bronchitis, and I quote, has _‘absolutely no voice’_ and is _‘incredibly contagious’_ and that we’d _‘really need a warrant to reach her, she’s really out of it, you wouldn’t want this bug anywhere near you, goodbye, Detective.’”_

Brooke holds back a laugh. “A solid excuse.”

“Hey, as far as the captain knows, the bitch has bronchitis. I’m not gonna be the one to tell him that she’s sitting in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.”

“Thanks, Yvie.”

Brooke can picture Yvie shrugging on the other end of the phone. “Hey, do what you gotta do. We’ll sort this shit out, okay? Find out if that congressman can be linked to the explosion and those men after you. I’ll keep you updated on what we find here as long as you do the same.”

“You know I will.” It’s true. She’ll always have Yvie’s back.

Brooke hangs up, tosses the burner phone onto the couch beside her. Vanessa’s magazine drops from in front of her face almost comically as she turns to Brooke.

“You weren’t fooling anyone with those pretend reading skills.”

Vanessa sticks out her tongue at her. A professional, buttoned up politician. Absolutely. “I’ll have you know I learned a _shit_ ton about commercial whaling in the 70s from this magazine.”

“Oh, have you now?” Brooke can’t help but grin in her direction, at the way that Vanessa is holding up the magazine like it’s a trophy.

“Forget this, now that you’re off the phone. You were talkin’ to someone named after an Eevee Pokémon or something?”

Brooke snorts. “Not Eevee. Yvie. Full name Yvangeline. Though once a coworker called her that and she broke his nose. Didn’t get in trouble for it, miraculously.”

Brooke can read Vanessa like an open book, and sees the hundreds of questions that flit across her face that she wants to ask but doesn’t know how.

She’s used to guarding both her past and present like they’re precious metals, ones that could be tarnished by exposure to any other person. Vanessa’s face, open and inquisitive and holding back while waiting for her to speak makes her want to take pity, give Vanessa a little bit to work with than she has in the past day.

How much would Vanessa be able to tarnish her heart, anyway?

“She’s a detective from my old district, still works there. Still Robbery-Homicide. We went through the academy together, got each other through the early years. We’ve stayed friends. She still helps me out from time to time now. ” Brooke thinks back to them partnered as uniformed cops, being the only two women in their department when they started at their precinct. How they worked their asses off to stand out amongst the men

Brooke almost misses that time of her life, with the stiff uniforms and the late night shifts. A time where guns were still an unfamiliar weight in her hands, where her practice with them was limited to shooting ranges and paper targets. When she was still green and optimistic and wanted to do good things, to make a difference.

“So you _were_ a cop.” Vanessa’s shifted slightly close to her, cheek resting on her hand as she listens, but doesn’t push.

“Yeah. I was.” Not anymore. She’s not that person, hasn’t been for a long time.

“You and Yvie were close?”

“Still are. She had my back after things happened, even though I didn’t deserve it.”

Brooke doesn’t miss the burning curiosity on Vanessa’s face, as if she’s trying to figure out how to draw the information out of her without shutting her down. 

“What happened?”

The debate of whether she should tell Vanessa pulls back and forth in a tug of war in her head, a battle where she’s not sure which side is the one that she wants to win. It’s easier just to keep that sequence of events far, far away from ever reaching the surface. Stored deep enough in the recesses of her brain, where she can’t ruminate over them and get sucked into the black hole of ‘what ifs’ again.

But there’s Vanessa’s hand, resting over hers. Squeezing her fingers. Pulling her from the memories to the present, to the couch that they’re sitting on and the noise of crickets chirping outside the cabin window.

Vanessa’s thumb traces back and forth over the outside of Brooke’s hand, as she’s uncharacteristically quiet, and waits.

“It was six years ago. Homicide case, a 38 year old woman. Death by blunt force trauma. Left behind a 12 year old daughter.” She can feel the natural lapse back into her reporting mode from when she was a detective.

“Main suspect was always the husband, after previous run ins with the police over domestic abuse. Though his alibi was verified by his buddies. Not airtight by any means, but enough that we needed a warrant to needle him further.” She picks at a loose thread on the couch as she remembers his smug fucking face. “I knew it was him.”

Vanessa’s grip on her hand tightens as she takes a breath and continues, ignoring the thorns in her lungs that tear every time she pulls in oxygen to keep herself talking.

“The daughter had the signs, too. Classic bruises, flinching under any sort of gaze, but…the system is broken. CPS didn’t fucking do anything during the entire investigation, despite the many calls. I managed to finagle having the kid move in with her aunt during the investigation, at least. Kept her away from him for a little while. Left her my number if she needed anything.”

Brooke remembers the girl and the way that she would fold in on herself, how her rare smiles never seemed to meet her eyes. How she brought the girl a muffin one morning when she came in for the second round of questioning. How she wanted to keep her from ever getting hurt again, not that she had that power.

“She called me, absolutely hysterical on her aunt’s phone one night when I was working late. The banging on the door was fucking loud enough to come through on the other end of the line. His swearing, too.” Brooke bites her lip. “Took the cop car, siren blaring and all to get there and step in between him and the girl before he fucking killed her.”

The gun he waved around with the smell of alcohol on his breath. The way he had the girl and her aunt backed up against the kitchen counter. The way she dove in between them, not thinking straight and police procedure be damned.

“I shot him.”

Vanessa’s soft gasp pulls her out of the memory, one that threatens to cover her in a black ink stain that she’ll never be able to wash off.

The way the blood spread on the kitchen floor tiles. The way the aunt squeezed her shoulder, whispered a fucking _thank you_ as her shaky hands lowered the precinct-issued gun onto the counter.

“I got to claim self defense. Had enough bruises forming on my arms to do so, hence the honourable discharge. Didn’t cover the fact that what I did was completely out of line as a public service officer.” Her voice is flat, matching the grey static that takes over her brain, makes her feel numb the way it had been in the aftermath. How the disciplinary hearings, the meetings, the eventual return of her gun and badge felt like it they were happening to someone else, making her feel like she was watching the events play out from afar.

Vanessa whistles, low and under her breath. “Holy shit. There wasn’t an appeal process, or anything?”

“The damage was done.” She shrugs, not looking at Vanessa, her eyes instead watching the specks of dust floating under the light of the lamp. “Higher ups don’t care about nuances. They care about who makes them look bad – and how to get rid of them.”

“I’m sorry.” Vanessa’s hand squeezes hers. Brooke finally looks at her and feels relief that her fucking eyes aren’t full of pity. She isn’t looking at Brooke as if she feels bad for her. Brooke doesn’t need that.

“How did you…” She watches Vanessa pause, brow furrowed as she tries to figure out how to word her next statement.

Brooke finishes it for her. “Start killing people for a living?”

Vanessa raises her hands up in mock surrender. “You said it, not me.”

Brooke thinks back to a few weeks after her discharge, when she was a bottle deep into shitty whiskey and sprawled on her kitchen floor. How the incessant ringing of her cellphone had dazed her, fingers struggling to answer the call from her old mentor from the academy. How she had met him for drinks in a dingy bar in her hungover state the next evening, head pounding as he told her there were _still ways_ to make money if she wanted to, because she had the talent for it. They way she had clung onto his reassurance, the thread of possibilities that he had dangled in front of her, being so worn out, tired, needing something, anything to keep her going. How she hadn’t noticed how much he had changed since being a clean-cut instructor at the academy.

She remembers her first kill. Her first purposeful kill, that of a nightclub owner who had a penchant for abusing his employees and undercutting their pay. One that her old mentor had taken her out to celebrate for afterwards. How it seemed okay, sustainable, that she was doing something _good_ , maybe, by getting rid of terrible people. Before things got bad and her old mentor had gotten in too far over his head and dragged her in, only to _die-_

-she can’t.

“A story for another time.” Not today. Not when the memories are making her hands clench in fists and sweat form on her brow, her heart pumping the blood through her arteries and veins fast enough that she feels like she’s burning up.

Vanessa’s hands are on hers again, fingers gently opening up her fists and tracing soothing motions onto her palms. “Another time. Sorry. Didn’t mean to push.”

“It’s fine.” It’s not. She feels exposed, torn open, not quite sure how Vanessa has gotten her to fucking open up about shit that can’t surface. Not if she wants to keep her head on straight and in one piece.

“You’re…a good person, Brooke. You don’t fuckin’ look like you believe it with that facial expression you’re throwing at me, but you are.” Vanessa ignores her scoffs, continuing on. “I’m in politics, I’ve seen despicable people. You’re not one of them.”

The laugh that comes out of Brooke is bitter, stilted. “I kill people for money. Forget that fact?”

Vanessa shrugs, unperturbed. “So far, you seem to still be at a perfect score for only killing the shitty ones.” She nudges Brooke’s shoulder. “You haven’t killed me yet either, you fuckin’ softie.”

Softie? She’s a _hitwoman,_ for Christ’s sake. She’s not soft.

Vanessa giggles at her offended expression. “I said what I said.”

“I’m not soft!”

“That growing smile on your face says otherwise.”

With that, Vanessa places a kiss on her cheek, moving closer and leaning into her side, the way she’s done so since they slept together for the first time the previous day (then a second time, then a third, then a fourth). Vanessa is tentative at first, as if she doesn’t want to spook her.  It isn’t long, though, until Brooke feels her own tense body begin to relax underneath Vanessa’s weight. 

She lifts up an arm as her breathing begins to regulate and lets Vanessa snuggle into her, before she wraps her arms around her, tugs her in close. She can feel the poisoned memories that have been seeping through her veins begin to pull away underneath Vanessa’s warmth, retreating back into her brain into the boxes that she keeps them in most of the time. She’s in control of them. For now.


	8. chapter eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously: Someone else is trying to kill Vanessa, and wants to frame Brooke for it. Learned some more about Brooke's past, too. 
> 
> This chapter: Nightmares, breakfast food, and scrabble, oh my.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been awhile, but here we are! So, so lucky and thankful to bean and writ, the absolute best angels in the world who are both so encouraging and patient. I love you both.

_By the time she reaches her mentor, his shirt is more crimson than grey. The blood has soaked through the material, seeping both into the leather jacket that is slung over his shoulders and onto the concrete floor._

_Breathe, breathe, breathe. He’s going to be okay, there’s no way he’s not going to get through this the way he manages to survive everything else-_

_Except for the fact that her police training is telling her that no one with this much blood loss after a shot to the chest (the left side, hitting the aorta, right above his heart) has a chance of surviving past two, maybe three minutes. Three minutes of agony as the blood gurgles and spurts and causes a death akin to drowning._

_She rips off her scarf regardless, ready to stem the flow (already soaking through her jeans as she kneels beside him, already staining her jacket), before his hand lifts from the ground, grabs her arm. Stops her._

_“It’s okay, B.”_

_“No, no, it’s not, let me-”_  

 _“You know it doesn’t matter at this point.”_  

_“Just let me stop the bleeding, you fucking-“_

_“Brooke.”_

_She looks at him. His face is paler. A sheen of sweat highlights his forehead. He tries to lift his head up to look at her, but drops it back down. Winces._

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“Why? You’re not fucking dying.” He’s not. He’s_ not, _not after everything. He can’t._

_A huff of laughter escapes his lips. Of course he finds it fucking funny. “We both know that’s not true.”_

_She’s ready to interrupt him, fight some more (despite the fact that she knows, doesn’t mean that she has to accept it), when he continues, “But that’s not why.”_

_What is he on about? “The blood loss is getting to your brain, old man.” The scarf has done nothing to stem it (she knew it wouldn’t)._

_“There’s a shitstorm coming your way. That’s what I’m sorry for. You deserve better.”_

_“What the fuck do you mean?”_

_His face contorts, both in pain and in the expression that Brooke has come to recognize as one that takes over his features when he has to talk about things that he doesn’t want to. Like when he told her why he left the force. When he told her about his gambling problem._

_“These people. Connected to the Cain job we had a few months ago. Made a deal with them. Didn’t deliver.”_

_“What?” He’s not making any sense, they completed the hit for Cain and split the money then moved on, she hasn’t thought about it since then-_

_“Not that hit. A second one.”_

_Second one?_

_“Didn’t tell you about it. Seemed worse. More dangerous. More of a chance of fucking it up.” His words are more stilted, now, his breaths strained. “I fucked up, kid.”_

_No. He doesn’t fuck up on the job, ever. He taught her how to meticulously double check, look things over, make sure everything goes to plan._

_“Botched it. There were witnesses, people who saw. Made it out. But they convicted one of the family members. He huffs. “Ironic. Since she was one of the ones to order the hit.”_

_His eyes close and she shakes him, tugs on his collar (‘if you don’t finish talking I swear to_ god-’ _) to get him to wake up, open his eyes. His voice continues in a groan._

_“They’ve been out for blood. Mine. Wanted the money back from the hit. And a bullet in my skull.”_

_He can’t be right. He’s not, she would have noticed by now-_

_“You really think I need to ‘work overtime’ with the money we make? Been going after the bastards, picking them off one by one. It was working. Till now.” His face contorts in pain, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “They got one of the things that they wanted.”_

_“You’re not dying.” He’s not. He can’t._

_“Come on, B. We both know.”_

_She scrunches her eyes shut, pretending that this isn’t happening and maybe they’re in a strange parallel universe, that’s it, they’re going to go back and grab a round of beers and everything will be fine. It has to._

_“They got their revenge hit on me. They’re probably gonna come to you, B.”_

_“I can take them.” She’s not afraid._

_“Not to kill you. For the money I took from them for the hit.”_

_What? “Why would they come to me?”_

_“They know you already from the first hit. Know that we work together. They want the money back, but it’s gone.”_

_She scoffs. His fucking gambling. “Okay, not a big deal, I have a shit ton from our hits in the last year already deposited and saved up, now let me call 911-”_

_“1.2 million.”_

_Her breath hitches. She’s misheard him, there’s no way that he’s spent that fucking much with his betting, she knows he’s reckless but even for him..._

_“Excuse me?”_

_“It’s gone. All of it. They still want it. They’re gonna come for you to get it.”_

_She ignores his words because he’s wrong, pressing the scarf into his chest despite the fact that the red has already drenched it. “You’re not dying, shut up, shut_ up-“

 _“Be careful, B.”_

_“No, no, no-”_

“Hey, hey, shhh, you’re okay. You’re okay.”

She’s not in the alley covered in blood, she’s in bed. Not her own, but a bed. No blood.

“You’re alright.” A soft voice. A hand running through her hair. An arm around her waist. Vanessa.

She fights the urge to pull away, stays still. Breathes in and out once, twice, three times. Feels the stiffness that her body has taken on start to fade, works to unclench her jaw, relax the rest of her muscles.

She’s here. Not leaning over his dead body.

“It was just a bad dream. You’re safe.”

A bad dream.

She’s safe.

She opens her eyes, looks up at the ceiling above her as she rolls onto her back and gasps in a breath, then another. Wooden beams dusted with cobwebs. A ceiling fan that hasn’t worked in a decade. Moonlight that streams into the room through the curtainless windows.

Brooke looks over to her right. Vanessa, whose sleepy eyes search her face, asking questions that Brooke doesn’t quite want to answer just yet.

Vanessa reaches out, brushes away the hair that’s falling in front of Brooke’s face, pushes it back.  

Brooke hasn’t had one of these nightmares in years. She’s never had someone in her bed during one, the old routine being nights all alone where she’s violently yanked from her sleep, hyperventilating and unable to quell the panic that only dissipates once she’s too exhausted to fight it anymore. 

Right here, right now, Vanessa watching her and looking at her with _concern_ of all things, makes her feel exposed. Brooke wants to curl up, disappear, make Vanessa forget that she ever saw anything. 

The alarm clock over Vanessa’s shoulder reads 3:30 am. Brooke groans.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Vanessa doesn’t bat an eyelid, instead pushing the covers off of herself. 

“Luckily for you, I need to get up to pee anyway.”

Brooke lets out a laugh at that. It seems to be the very effect Vanessa wanted, judging by the way that she winks at Brooke before sauntering to the bathroom in nothing but an oversized t-shirt that she found in the closet on the first night.

Brooke can’t help but pull Vanessa in close when she comes back to bed, holding her tighter than she normally would. She feels less exposed, more in control, but the tension seeping through her body threatens to freeze her entire being. Vanessa doesn’t seem to mind the closeness, placing a kiss on her sternum before closing her eyes.

Brooke can feel her heartbeat start to regulate once more, the erratic bursting inside her chest beginning to subside and fall back into its quiet, normal rhythm. She closes her eyes and she wonders if Vanessa can feel it too, from the way that her head is resting against her chest.

The next time that she wakes, it’s gradual. No jerking from a memory that should be locked far, far down in her soul, or a nightmare so real that she can smell the rusted scent of blood caked underneath her fingertips. Instead it’s a gentle touch along her arm, a pair of legs that tangle with hers underneath the sheets.

(But it still hovers. The way his eyes hadn’t even closed when he died, instead glassing over and becoming unfocused. The way her shaky hands had pressed down on his lids, to make herself believe for a second that he was just asleep. Not dead.)

Vanessa’s hair shines in golden tones underneath the sunlight that streams in through the windows as she smiles at Brooke, lying on her side while propped up on an elbow.

“Look who finally decided to get up.”

Brooke looks at the clock behind her. “It’s only 8:45.”

(The way that his death felt nothing like the ones that she caused by her own hand, where she was detached, compartmentalized. The way it made her realize that if he wasn’t invincible, neither was she - no matter how many weapons she had.) 

She doesn’t need it. Not right now. She needs to put the thoughts _back._

Vanessa’s voice, loud and carrying as it is, cuts through the fog. “I can’t hear you over the sound of all the birds awake and chirp chirping outside.” 

Brooke looks at her. Hair in waves splayed over her pillow. A smile that reaches her eyes and makes them glint, dimples apparent on her cheeks. _Fuck,_ she’s so cute. 

She can pour all of her focus onto Vanessa. Maybe it will stop the doubts and fears and bad memories and the feelings of dread that surround her soul, begging to be acknowledged. Vanessa here, in front of her, safe and whole and decidedly _alive._ She can be her guiding light for now, until her heart begins to settle from the way it still wants to escape out of her chest. 

So Brooke reaches out and tickles her side, making Vanessa yelp and shove her back while trying not to giggle. “What are you eager to do so early in the morning, anyway?”

Vanessa’s eyes gleam. “Well.” Her hands dance at the hem of Brooke’s shirt, making Brooke shiver despite herself.

“Glad you asked.” 

Vanessa pushes Brooke down gently so that she’s laying on her back. She lifts up a leg and straddles Brooke in a fluid motion, places a kiss in the crook of her neck. “So glad.”

Brooke takes stock of her environment. Vanessa on top of her, curls tickling at her face. The warmth of Vanessa’s body pressed against her own, the sensation enough to keep her focus on the present. On the now. She can do this, stay here. Not spiral. 

So Brooke nudges Vanessa’s chin, gets her to lift her face up so that she can kiss her. But stops, wrinkles her nose. “Morning breath. Both of us. Gross.”

She can’t help but smile as Vanessa snickers, tugs on her arm. “Come on. Bathroom, then back to bed.”

Brooke can work with that. 

When they’re back from the bathroom, pulling the sheets on top of them once more under the cool air, Brooke wastes no time in pinning Vanessa underneath her. Vanessa deserves her full attention. She wants to give it to her. 

Brooke presses kisses along her collarbone, up her neck, beneath her ear, relishing in the sounds that escape from Vanessa’s lips. Her mouth lingers on the spot on Vanessa’s lower neck that she’s discovered is incredibly sensitive, feeling Vanessa’s nails dig into her shoulder blades.

She loves how responsive Vanessa is, the way that she can feel her reacting under her touch. It makes her wish that she can do this forever, kiss her and tease her until Vanessa can’t take it anymore. 

But then Vanessa whimpers a _please_ into her ear, her hot breath against her skin and damn if it doesn’t make Brooke want to bend and give in to whatever she wants. She tugs the oversized shirt over her head, savouring the sight of Vanessa laid bare in front of her, chest rising and falling in shallow breaths as she stares up with wide eyes.    

Brooke kisses down Vanessa’s chest, between her breasts, feels Vanessa’s back arch when she brushes a thumb over one of her nipples as it hardens beneath her touch. She moves her kisses lower, mouth down to her other nipple and swirls her tongue, only to lift her face up and lightly blow air across the surface. Brooke can feel the smirk growing on her own face when Vanessa whines, goosebumps rising on her skin.

She presses kisses down Vanessa’s stomach, nips at her hip bone, revels in the whimper that Vanessa lets out when she finally, finally pushes her legs apart. 

“I like you like this.” Brooke’s own voice comes out in a purr as she kisses up Vanessa’s thigh and looks up at her, sees the way that one of her hands is covering her face while the other is uselessly grasping at the sheets. Vanessa’s already so worked up, falling apart beneath her without Brooke having to do anything. Brooke doesn’t think she’ll ever tire of it. 

“Move your hand, baby. Wanna see that face of yours when I eat you out.” The words slip out before Brooke can stop them. Not that she regrets it, especially when she hears the whine from Vanessa’s mouth as she drops her hand back onto the mattress. Brooke lets go of her hold that she has on one of Vanessa’s thighs, offers her own hand. Vanessa intertwines their fingers, grip tightening when Brooke moves her kisses to where she’s been waiting for them. 

Brooke teases experimentally at her folds, holding Vanessa’s hips down with her free hand when she begins to squirm. She circles her tongue around her clit, avoiding it till she hears Vanessa begging above her. 

The whimpers of ‘ _c’mon Brooke, please’_ are truly some of the sweetest sounds that she’s ever heard. She finally gives in when Vanessa starts to quiet down. Gets too quiet, in her opinion. 

Vanessa’s hand holds onto Brooke’s in a death grip when she begins to lap and suck at her clit, other hand fisting in the sheets. Brooke can feel Vanessa’s body tensing and the way she’s gasping again, can’t hold it back as her hips jerk without her control. 

She doesn’t stop until Vanessa’s thighs are lifting from the bed, squeezing against her head - not that she cares. Brooke works her through her orgasm, slowing down and lifting her face up to kiss the inside of Vanessa’s thigh when she pushes her back, sweaty and spent and speechless.

Brooke crawls her way back up the bed, content to lay beside Vanessa and place a kiss on her shoulder blade, stroke her hair as she catches her breath. The sight of her like this, all dazed and soft and hair fanned out around her like an angel is the prettiest vision that Brooke’s ever seen. 

She thinks for a second that Vanessa has drifted off, from the way her eyes are fluttering shut and how her breath is evening out. Brooke doesn’t mind in the least, happy to let her sleep - it’s not like they have anywhere urgent to be, and knowing that she’s the one to have undone her like this fills her with a sense of pride. 

But then Vanessa is up, pulling her hair back into a bun with the elastic on her wrist and climbing on top of Brooke with a glint in her eye that broadcasts her intentions quite clearly. 

It’s not until Vanessa eats her out like she’s her last meal, leaving her gasping and trembling against the head of the bed, and after Brooke pulls her close to her side, that she realizes that the residual tension in her body from the nightmare is completely gone.

* * *

Vanessa’s hungry. 

It’s nearly eleven and they’re still making breakfast, having been distracted by _other_ activities in the morning. 

She pulls the last egg out of the carton from the fridge and winces at the emptiness before closing the door. They’re running out of the groceries that they bought on the way to the cabin. It’s been a few days, so it makes sense but…it means they’ll have to leave again to get more. Have to be exposed. What if the people after her are out there, waiting with guns or fucking grenades or who knows what else?

So maybe she’s a bit unnerved. Sue her. She just wants more food. 

Brooke’s cutting up fruit on the kitchen island, arranging pieces of melon and strawberries and pineapple on a plate in a way that looks positively delicate. It hits Vanessa, then, how domestic the scene must look. Making breakfast together lazily, still in oversized t shirts as pyjamas, looking like neither of them have a care in the world. Something that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Vanessa pulls the now-scrambled eggs off of the stove, scooping them from the pan onto a waiting plate and putting it on the table next to the fruit. She then pops the last two slices of bread into the toaster, throwing away the newly empty bag. 

She turns to Brooke. “We’re almost out of food. Soon we’re gonna have to start eating the drywall.”

Brooke snorts as she fiddles with the ancient coffee maker, which is letting out an alarming steaming noise. “Or do a grocery run.” 

Vanessa bites her lip. Now a time as good as any to bring it up, right? “Is it...safe? Y’know. For us to go out somewhere public?” 

“Honestly, as long as we keep our heads down, we should be fine.” Brooke lets out a little ‘ _yes’_ when she finally gets the coffee maker going. “No one else knows where we are. The people in the grocery store are probably all locals from around here.”

It’s not really enough to assuage her fears. What if the people trying to kill her (still trying, unlike Brooke) followed the two of them to the cabin, and are just waiting for them to appear outside for some sort of ambush? 

Brooke turns to her before she starts conducting wild scenarios in her head, of ways that they could be stepping into booby traps if they leave. “Besides, if anyone even tries to come near you, I’ll protect you.”

Brooke says it in a joking, light sort of way, but Vanessa hears an undercurrent of seriousness, darkness, in her voice. It makes her shiver, because she can tell that Brooke means it. 

Which, in itself, is kind of reassuring. 

She watches Brooke’s face carefully as they eat their breakfast. The worry lines, the tenseness in her face is not obvious as it was last night. Or was it this morning? Whenever Brooke woke up screaming near bloody murder. 

It had been strange, seeing Brooke like that. Someone who lives in a constant unfazed state, capable of handling anything in her way suddenly folding in on herself, crying and mumbling in her sleep about death and money and who knows what else that woke Vanessa from her own dream (which was about getting a new puppy as a sibling for Riley and was _quite_ soft and nice and something she wants to do after this mess is over). 

But Brooke had been hyperventilating and falling apart, and it had felt like second nature to grab ahold of her, soothe her, wake her up from the clutches that her mind had over her consciousness. Vanessa had pressed kisses to her hair, held her until her breathing returned back to normal and her eyes lost their terrified look. 

But that fear, the vulnerability had disappeared as fast as it came. Brooke’s mask of calm, of complete control, is back. As if nothing ever happened. 

Vanessa wants to know what on earth in Brooke’s nightmare was wild enough to cause it to break in the first place.

Perhaps she should have waited till Brooke had a little bit more food in her to ask. Maybe asking the day after it happened wasn’t the smartest thing to do. But it’s not her fault she’s fucking curious and really has no tact (something that A’keria tells her far too often, especially after brutal press interviews). 

Brooke’s face turns to stone when she brings it up, trying to sound casual. Her fork stabs the pineapple on her plate a bit too hard for Vanessa’s taste. 

“Nothing. It wasn’t anything. Don’t worry about it.” Brooke slams her coffee mug down, some of the liquid spilling over the rim and onto the table. 

Jeez. 

“Sorry, I just wanted to know, that’s all. It was surprising seeing you like that.” Vanessa’s answer is muffled over a bite of toast. Hey, she’s gotta eat while investigating. 

Brooke doesn’t look at her. “Luckily enough for you, you won’t have to worry about seeing that again. It won’t happen.”

“Don’t know if it’s that easy, Mami. You can’t just tell nightmares to fuck off.” If you could, she wouldn’t have had that awful dream about failing her law board exams all throughout her last year of school. 

“Just drop it, okay?” Brooke’s voice is _aggressive,_ makes Vanjie look up from her scrambled eggs in surprise and also notice the slight panic, slight terror behind the other woman’s eyes that flit there for just a second before vanishing. “It’s none of your fucking business.”

Vanessa raises her hands in mock surrender. “Sorry. Jeez. Didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

“You didn’t hit a nerve. You just don’t know when to stop when you should.”

Okay, unnecessary. Vanessa can’t stop her own voice from raising in response, not that it lowers the glowering in Brooke’s eyes at all. “Excuse me for wanting to make sure you were okay after screaming your damn lungs out. I’ll stop giving a shit if it makes you this hostile.” 

“Oh, fuck off.” Brooke’s pushing away from the table, breakfast left half eaten as she stalks out of the kitchen. 

Vanessa blinks for a moment. She didn’t expect Brooke to get _that_ pissed. Sure, she’s getting a little brave with the prodding as she’s been learning Brooke’s boundaries a little better the last few days but...she didn’t think it would be enough for that. 

The door to the guest room that Brooke’s been staying in ( _was_ staying in, before they started sharing Vanessa’s) is shut. Vanessa knows that she’s behind it. She kind of wants to go knock, apologize, maybe argue some more - hasn’t made up her mind yet - but she can’t. The closed door feels like a force field, an invisible boundary between the two of them - one that she hasn’t felt since before coming to the cabin. 

She finishes her breakfast instead, cleaning up her dishes (but leaving Brooke’s, the bitch can clean hers up on her own, thank you very much) and goes to Brooke’s makeshift board. It’s only grown during their stay at the cabin, pictures and notes spread across the wall and connected with yarn like an intricate web. Vanessa can see Brooke’s thought process around the situation laid out clearly in her notes - the underlining of certain names, the arrows drawn between different events. There’s the note underneath the picture of the congressman who had hired Brooke, with ‘ _who are you working with????’_ scrawled in Sharpie. Vanessa can practically feel the frustration coming off of the page.

It’s true. It doesn’t make sense. If the man hired Brooke, and Brooke isn’t attempting to kill her (yet, at least, after their morning bickering), then who else is still after her? And who hired them? Was it the same congressman, trying to cover his bases?

The notes and arrows and pictures blur together, and start to make Vanessa’s head spin. There’s so much she doesn’t know, doesn’t understand. She’s smack dab in the middle of it, people are trying to _kill_ her and she doesn’t know why or who they even are. Hell, her fucking blonde roommate at the moment wanted to do so not so long ago. 

Vanessa just wanted to run for fucking congress, maybe make some differences along the way. Not get swept into some fucking mess where nothing makes sense and she might not even survive. 

Has breathing always been this hard? 

She can’t tell. 

She wants out. 

“Hey.”

Vanessa looks up, tries to focus her eyes. Brooke, in the doorway. Holding two mugs of tea and...a _Scrabble_ board game box under her arm?

Brooke’s voice comes out stilted, stuttering. Vanessa would laugh if she wasn’t nearly about to lose her mind. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...snapped.”

“It’s fine, Mami. Shouldn’t have pressed you.” Her own voice comes out much softer than she intends it to. 

“No, I just - it’s not fair to you. You’re allowed to ask.” Brooke doesn’t make eye contact with her, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. Vulnerable Brooke for the second time in one day? Vanessa’s not quite sure what sort of spiked water they’ve been drinking in the cabin.

“I’m not gonna ask you no more. You don’t owe me your dark memories.” Brooke really doesn’t. It’s not going to _stop_ Vanessa’s curiosity in any way but she’s not automatically privy to knowing this shit, no matter how many times Brooke has saved her life.

Vanessa can see some of the tension fall from Brooke’s shoulders, the way she begins to hold herself a little lighter. “I haven’t had to worry about anyone else in a long time and it’s... _hard._ But I’ll try better.”

Vanessa used to believe that the biggest shocker about Brooke was the fact that she kills people, and quite regularly. But seeing her not only vulnerable, but softer, more open, being the one to try and fix things? It’s about to damn near knock her over. 

“If you try, so will I. Two way street. Gonna respect the space that you need around certain topics, so long as you do the same for me. Not that I have much to hide. My life ain’t nearly as dramatic as yours has probably been.”

Brooke grins then, a real smile. “I don’t know. You look like the kind who went wild in your college years.” 

“Everyone stayed alive, though.” She ducks from the pillow that Brooke grabs to throw in her direction. “Too soon?”

It’s enough to break the ice and the barrier between them, the two of them giggling and falling onto the couch. Brooke opens the _Scrabble_ box. “Want to play?”

Oh, Lord. Brooke’s probably going to whoop her ass. “I didn’t go to school for English. All the eloquent speeches? My speechwriter’s doing.”

Vanessa can see Brooke trying her best to hold back a laugh. “C’mon, you’ll be just fine.”

She gives her best fake-sigh in return, acquiescing. “So long as you let me count curse words as playable.”

When Brooke begins to set up the board in response with a grin, Vanessa knows that they’re cool again.

Things may be fucked, incredibly, stupidly fucked, but she’s got a killer girl (literally and figuratively) to spend time with for the next little while. She may as well enjoy it. 


	9. chapter nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Brooke reaches for the coat rack behind her and pulls off a bucket hat that can only be described as memorable. It glows a fluorescent green, pink text across the front designating the hat wearer as a ‘#1 Dad’._
> 
> _It’s hideous. Vanessa loves it. She can’t help but grab for the hat with a wicked grin, impulse control of a 3 year old toddler shining through. “Gimme that.”_
> 
> _The bucket hat is so big that it falls over her eyes, leaving her gazing at obnoxiously neon fabric. She puts her hands on her hips with a flair, leans slightly to the side. “Thoughts? Would you consider me to be a ‘number one dad’?”_
> 
> _Brooke’s peal of laughter makes her grin, too, and look up at the other woman when she snatches the hat from Vanessa’s head. “Parent of the year. Though I don’t think that hat’s going to help much with any efforts to go incognito.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw in this chapter for mentions of guns and violence. Thank you writ and bean for betaing and for providing A+ commentary while doing so (favourite one: 'BROOKE IS A SWORD LESBIAN'). Enjoy!

“You got disguises or anything for our little jaunt?” 

Brooke lets out a snort at Vanessa’s question. “What do I look like, a spy?”

“Don’t you have to be able to sneak around and shit as a hitwoman?” Hitwoman. Brooke, smiling in front of her, braiding her long blonde hair into a plait out of her face, a hitwoman. 

It’s hard to reconcile the two versions of Brooke in her head, sometimes. The cold killer who had slaughtered men in front of Vanessa on her apartment floor, versus the woman with a twinkle in her eyes who peppered kisses all over Vanessa’s face to make her laugh this morning.

“I’m usually pretty good at going undetected.” Brooke says it with an air of pride, satisfaction in her voice as she pulls on her jacket. “Blending into the background when I need to.”

“Hey, don’t think I’ve forgotten that one time I fuckin’ saw you on the street and you ran away from my ass so fast-”

“Ugh.” Brooke covers her face in her hands. “Don’t even start.”

Vanessa tries to move Brooke’s hands away, smirking when Brooke makes a face. “‘Undetected', my ass.”

Vanessa’s laugh turns into a screech when Brooke brings her hands down, tickles her sides. “No playing dirty, you cheat.”

Bringing up the rather insane way that they interacted with each other the first few times is the type of dark humour that Vanessa finds she really fucking enjoys. How else are they supposed to deal, anyway?

Brooke reaches for the coat rack behind her and pulls off a bucket hat that can only be described as memorable. It glows a fluorescent green, pink text across the front designating the hat wearer as a _‘#1 Dad’._  

It’s hideous. Vanessa loves it. She can’t help but grab for the hat with a wicked grin, impulse control of a 3 year old toddler shining through. “Gimme that.”

The bucket hat is so big that it falls over her eyes, leaving her gazing at obnoxiously neon fabric. She puts her hands on her hips with a flair, leans slightly to the side. “Thoughts? Would you consider me to be a ‘number one dad’?”

Brooke’s peal of laughter makes her grin, too, and look up at the other woman when she snatches the hat from Vanessa’s head. “Parent of the year. Though I don’t think that hat’s going to help much with any efforts to go incognito.” 

Vanessa gives her a fake pout (and if she notices the way Brooke’s eyes soften, she says nothing, no ma’am). “If you say so, master of all spies.”

“C’mon, you.” Brooke tugs on her arm, pulling her out the door and outside for the first time in days. “Time for us to venture back out into the world.”

The vibrant trees that surround the cabin look like they’re straight out of a Disney movie. It’s a contrast from the night that they got here, when the shadows and fog had cast grey tones over everything, making the forest seem haunted and untouched by anyone before them. Now, sunlight streams in between the leaves, and birds chirp at each other high up in the branches. Vanessa swears she sees a butterfly float by. It feels deceiving, though. An aura of calm that’s hiding something much more sinister.

Perhaps it’s what makes her squeeze Brooke’s hand extra tight during the ten steps or so to the SUV, glance around the surrounding forest looking for signs of movement, of anyone hidden. It may be early in the afternoon, but she’s allowed to worry about who might be lurking, waiting to take her out.

It’s fine. 

Brooke gives her hand a reassuring squeeze in response, so that’s something. 

The sunlight makes her squint and wish that she had her sunglasses. Maybe she can pick up a cheap pair during their grocery run. 

Brooke tugs her to the back of the SUV and pops open the trunk. The sight makes Vanessa’s eyes widen as she lets out a low whistle.

Weapons. Tons of them. Long cases that Vanessa can only assume carry rifles arranged neatly to one side, a variety of pistols beside them. A bunch of complex looking equipment on the other side that Vanessa would have no idea what to do with were they ever to be in her hands. Knives lining the side wall. And is that-

“A _sword?_ ”

“What? Oh. Not a real sword. From an old Halloween costume, actually.” Brooke shrugs, upturn of her lip. “Figured it would help add some dramatic flair.”

“Of course you did.” As if a trunk full of already lethal weapons wasn’t quite enough. 

Vanessa reaches a hand out tentatively, brushes it over some of the equipment. “How the hell do you even choose what to use?”

Brooke’s eyebrows raise in surprise, as if no one’s asked her that question before. Considering her field, no one’s probably stayed alive long enough around her when she’s on the job to do so.

“Well.” Brooke reaches for one of the long cases, unzips it at the corner and shifts over so that Vanessa can peek inside. A sniper rifle indeed, looking straight out of a military base. “These are better for long range shots. Ones that are too risky to pull off up close, where you’re more likely to get caught and instead still have a chance of making the shot from further away.” 

Her fingers brush the sleek barrel of the rifle. “A personal favourite.”

Brooke has a favourite gun. Goddamn.

If Brooke sees the slight ‘ _o’_ forming on Vanessa’s lips she ignores it, instead gesturing to the handguns. “These are for closer range. Different ones work depending on the expected distance, loudness, accuracy, and recoil for a given job.” 

She tries to picture Brooke with a handgun, and her brain can only conjure up an image of cop Brooke with a police-issued firearm. It’s kinda hot. 

Brooke then shifts her attention to the pile of equipment beside the handguns. “Laser rangefinder, binoculars, some scopes, and stockpiles of extra ammunition.” 

Vanessa has no idea what half of the items that Brooke points to are even for, but her eyes are too busy darting over the contents of the trunk to ask.

“Anyway. Solid career path. Would recommend to any young professional.” Brooke’s dry humour makes Vanessa bark out a laugh.

“The wildest show and tell I’ve ever fucking seen.” She pauses. “Can I keep one on me when we head out?”

The thought has been running through her mind the entire time that Brooke’s been showing her the trunk. It’s not because she wants to feel like a badass with a gun (okay, partially) but she wants to be...safer. Right now, as heart flips over in her chest while she feels like there’s a target painted on her back, she wants all the protection she can get. She needs it.

Brooke’s head whips up sharply, eyes piercing. “Why?”

“I know how to handle a gun, I have one. Remember?” She does, at home. Something Brooke should remember better than anyone else, after taking it from her that night in the alley and delivering it to her office the next morning. It feels as if ages have passed since that time, not mere weeks.

“That’s not a reason.” 

Vanessa huffs. Brooke’s right, but still. Saying it out loud feels so...stupid. “I just wanna feel safer, that’s all.”

“Will it make you feel safer?” Brooke’s gaze at her is unreadable.

“Something to defend myself with? Honestly yeah, it will.” She can’t help that she wants every safety mechanism in place possible. 

“Have you ever used yours? Actually used it?” The question sounds like a challenge, but Brooke’s voice is soft when she asks it.

Still, it doesn’t stop Vanessa from bristling. “At a shooting range when I got my license. Why does it matter?”

“It’s one thing to hold it, possess one. Another feeling entirely once you pull the trigger out of that setting. It takes a toll, Ness.” Vanessa’s eyebrows raise at the nickname. Brooke doesn’t seem to realize that she’s even said it, continuing on. “You don’t realize the gravity of it until someone is bleeding out on the ground, and it’s because of you.”

Vanessa shivers, remembering the way that Brooke had killed the two men in her apartment, the hardness in her eyes. The lack of remorse. A sharp contrast from what she’s describing right now. 

Brooke seems to read her mind, lets out a bitter laugh. “Until you get desensitized to it, and seeing dead bodies does nothing to you anymore. Not a good place to be, either.”

Brooke bites a lip then, eyes flitting between her and the handguns in the trunk. “Though an extra layer of protection may not be a bad idea. Just in case.” 

She grabs for a small pistol, silver and sleek and light in Vanessa’s hands when Brooke passes it to her. It’s smaller than her own at home, but the weight feels familiar when she holds it up, sees it glint in the sunlight.

“Just…” Brooke trails off, and Vanessa can see the gears turning in her brain as she tries to figure out how to phrase her next statement. “Don’t aim for the head, or the upper torso, okay? If it comes down to it. Not that I’ll let it. But still. Go for less lethal areas if you absolutely have to, a shoulder or a leg, hell, even the junk. Enough to stop a person but not enough to kill them. You don’t want something like that on your conscience.”

“Good enough for me.” She’d rather not kill anyone either, thank you very much.

“Besides,” Brooke’s eyes are lighter now, a small smile on her face, “Wouldn’t _that_ be a public scandal for your campaign.”

“God. Imagine trying to explain that _._ ” What a press conference Ra’jah would have for that one. 

“He ran into my bullets. He ran into my bullets, ten times.” Brooke winks at her. 

Vanessa can’t hold back a noise of delight, nudging Brooke with her elbow. “Not a _Chicago_ reference.”

Brooke helps Vanessa check the safety on the gun, gives her a holster so that she can tuck the gun inside her jacket. The weight feels grounding, pulling her down.

They’re just going to the grocery store, for crying out loud. Not on some sort of mission. And yet, she doesn’t want to have to take it off later. Is she ever going to feel completely safe again, in her life?

Brooke reaches up to close the trunk, and Vanessa spares one final look at all of the weapons that are so neatly organized. 

She pauses on her words when the question inevitably floats into her mind, one that she’s not sure if she should ask. She’s surprised it’s taken so long to pop up, really. “What...what were you going to use on me?”

Was it a sniper rifle? One of the smaller handguns? 

Would Vanessa have seen it coming?

Brooke chokes slightly, turns it into a convincing cough. She avoids eye contact with her, hand running through her hair. “That - well-”

Vanessa takes pity on her. “I’m messing with you, Mami. I know it was the sword.” 

The out that she gives her makes Brooke scoff out a laugh, though Vanessa can see her shoulders visibly relax. “You got me.”

Maybe Vanessa doesn’t want to know. 

Nonetheless, she wonders if a death by Brooke’s hand would have felt like a reckoning.

Brooke rifles around in the glovebox once they get into the front seats of the SUV, muttering under her breath until she finds what she’s looking for. “Want these?” 

She’s holding out a pair of sunglasses, black and square rimmed. “You were squinting, earlier.” 

Vanessa takes them with a growing flush on her face over the fact that Brooke had even noticed. She slips them on, and Brooke gives her an appreciative once-over. 

“They suit you. Keep them.”

Again. A cold killer who is simultaneously one of the most thoughtful people that Vanessa has grown to know. What a juxtaposition she is. 

* * *

The first time that they had bought food was on their journey to the cabin after escaping from Vanessa’s apartment. Neither of them had really spoken in the supermarket that they had stopped at a couple of hours into their drive, picking up items as fast as they could and keeping their heads down so that they could get back on the road. Vanessa had been on the verge of a heart attack. 

This time is different. Brooke isn’t a terrifying, confusing concept to her anymore, not someone who’s just killed two people without blinking an eye. Instead, Vanessa looks at her and sees a woman who has a strange affection for nectarines (‘We _gotta_ get some, I love them’) and enjoys debating over the right type of bread to buy. 

Sure, Vanessa is still scared. Scared of whatever the fuck’s going to happen, of the people still looking for her. But she’s not scared of Brooke anymore, compared to last time.

It makes all the difference. 

They leave the store with their arms laden in shopping bags, covering the weapons in the trunk of the SUV with the groceries. Vanessa grabs a bag of trail mix and brings it with her to the front, putting it in between her and Brooke so that they can snack on the drive back. 

“Remind me to call Yvie for updates once we get back.” Brooke drives with one hand as she reaches into the bag of trail mix. “I feel like we’re missing something.”

“Yeah?” Vanessa looks up at her, answer muffled as she chews. “Like what?”

“That’s just it - I don’t _know._ I feel like we should have had a few more leads by now. Gotten a bit closer to figuring out who else is coming after you.”

It makes sense. God, she wishes she knew, so she could take them down first. She hates feeling like a moving target that’s being hunted for sport. 

“I can call Silky too, see how the team’s doing.” Vanessa takes another handful of trailmix, thinking back to their last conversation over a burner phone the night before. “I know they were thinking about running some political attacks on the congressman that hired you, though they haven’t done anything yet. Not sure if it would even be a good idea to provoke him more, honestly. Though we can’t just go and expose him instead, either.”

“Why not?” Brooke looks at her with a genuine curiosity that would crack her up if she couldn’t tell that Brooke was being completely serious. Has she truly not realized?

“Brooke. If we exposed him, it would expose _you._ Cause he hired you. Specifically to kill me.” Vanessa watches as understanding dawns on Brooke’s face, her eyes widening. 

“Right. Forgot about that.” Brooke’s voice is uncharacteristically small as she bites her lip. “I mean, considering the amount of people I’ve gotten rid of-”

Vanessa cuts her off. “Don’t even start. Not an option.” It’s not. There’s no way she wants anything to happen to Brooke, even if would take the congressman out of the picture. Who knows how many years she could go away for if all of her hits are exposed? 

She can’t lose Brooke - she just can’t. Not when she just got her in her life, this wonderful strange woman whom she wants to keep around after this is all over, know every part of.

“It’s not like I don’t deserve it.” Brooke’s laugh is humourless. “But, okay. For now. Though we’re keeping that option there, if push comes to shove.”

“We’re not going to even touch it. We’ll figure something out together, okay? Where we’re both fine and get through this in one piece and also _alive._ ”

Vanessa holds her hand out and Brooke doesn’t hesitate to entangle her fingers with hers. Her grip is tight and Vanessa gives it a squeeze in reassurance, rubs her thumb over the outside. Brooke looks away from the road for a second towards her, and Vanessa gives her a small smile. She wants to reach and smooth out the worried crease between her eyebrows.

There has to be some way that it can work out. 

Brooke parks the SUV when the cabin is still at least a hundred meters or so away from them, small like a doll’s house. Vanessa looks at her in question. “Why’d you stop so far?” 

“Figured it would be better to approach the cabin on foot, at least have an element of stealth if needed.” Brooke looks at Vanessa’s face, which is no doubt displaying the look of alarm that she’s feeling inside. “Not that we necessarily need it. Just in case. Better to do the ambushing than to be ambushed, y’know?”

Nonetheless, the uneasy feeling in Vanessa’s chest ruminates, grows. What if someone really is waiting for them there? It’s strange to think about, after the cabin has been their safe house for the last several days. The fact that leaving it has made it potentially dangerous is unsettling, their one safe place no longer a sanctuary.

“It has the same amount of danger as it does when we’re staying there.” Brooke’s hand is soothing hers now, tracing her palm. “Nothing’s changed. Just like to be careful, that’s all. Keep us both safe.”

Fair enough. Better to be vigilant at all times than to let their guards down at the wrong moment. She can accept that. 

“That makes sense.” Her hand goes to open the door. “Shall we start hauling these groceries in, or what?”

Brooke reaches out a hand to stop her. “Let me go in first, scope it out. Just to be sure, before calling you in.” 

Brooke isn’t her security guard, though she sure is doing better than anyone that Vanessa’s team has hired in the past. Vanessa shrugs, leans back against her seat. “If you say so.” 

Brooke leans over and kisses her forehead before getting out of the SUV. Vanessa watches as she opens the trunk, grabs a few grocery bags to bring along with her. Efficient.

She watches through the window as Brooke disappears inside the cabin, swinging the door closed. She feels sweat rolling down her neck, the afternoon sun turning the car into a greenhouse. She fans herself, and props open the car door when her hand motions don’t do much to alleviate the heat. 

Time feels as if it’s passing excruciatingly slowly, waiting for Brooke to come back. It hasn't been more than a minute or two from the way that the second hand ticks along on her watch, but it feels like hours, like being apart from Brooke this long stretches out time somehow. 

How long is it taking for the bitch to put some of the fruit in the fridge?

Vanessa starts counting in her head to make the time pass faster. It’s only when she reaches 357 seconds when little tendrils of doubt begin to creep in, take over the focus in her brain. It’s been a little _too_ long, she’s waited a little _too_ much. Sure, she’s impatient, a little dramatic at times, but she also knows Brooke. 

Brooke should be here by now. 

The thought hits her like a train, makes her stomach roll. Was there _really_ someone waiting for them, for Brooke, in the cabin?

She needs to get there now.

Her hand brushes over the holster on her waist, grabbing for the gun. Her grip is shaky as she creeps closer and closer, every step towards the cabin making the blood pump in her ears just a little bit louder. 

The door in front of her is closed, but unlocked. She presses her ear to it, tries to listen for any sound on the other side of the wall, inside the cabin. Nothing. 

She heaves it open, winces at the loudness of the _creak_ that follows.

“Brooke?”

She’s barely around the door when she hears-

“Vanessa, _no!”_

Brooke. On her knees, hands in the air, guns pointed at her head. Men that Vanessa’s never seen before, swivelling around wildly to face her. 

She freezes. Sees Brooke’s eyes wide, her mouth wordlessly pleading her to _run_. 

When Vanessa hears one of the men with a gun still pointed at Brooke click off the safety of his weapon, she does just that. Just not in the direction that Brooke wants her to go. 

Vanessa ducks from a pair of hands attempting to grab her, hurls herself towards Brooke. Pushes her down, body on top of hers. The _boom_ registers in her ears a second too late, makes her ears ring as she shields her body. 

“Brooke? Brooke.” 

Red on her hands. A gasping breath from Brooke, the wisps of her braid framing her face as she looks up at Vanessa. 

Sirens in the background. Vanessa barely hears them because no, no, _no_ , she’s not hurt so it’s not her blood and there’s a stain spreading on Brooke’s shirt and-

Yelling, as the men run out the door, footsteps thudding on the ground when the sirens get louder. A relieved sigh from Brooke’s lips as her glassy eyes search Vanessa’s, registers that she’s okay, before they close. 

No, no, no-

The words that leave Brooke’s lips are soft, barely heard under the yelling of _“Police!”_

“Thank God.”

_No._


	10. chapter ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa imagines coming home to Brooke - no, she and Brooke coming home at the same time after a late day, shedding their work clothes and putting on comfy pyjamas. Curling up on the couch and watching a movie together. A life where there would be no bullets, no one after their lives, no money over their heads. The tug in her heart for it is so strong that she feels like it’s going to rip out of her chest.
> 
> Maybe they’ll have it. One day. 
> 
> If Brooke survives through the night first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going away for vacation for a few days (yaaaay) but won't have wifi (boooo), so here's an update before I go!  
> Bean and Writ are the most wonderful friends and betas that a girl could ask for. This fic would not be what it is without the two of them.

“Fucking relax, girl.”

A’keria’s hand makes soothing motions on Vanessa’s thigh, trying to calm her down from the way that she can’t stop trembling. She wants to smack her hand away in response, because how can she relax?

She can’t. 

It’s been approximately two hours since someone tried to kill them. Shot Brooke. Since the police showed up at the cabin, sirens blazing and weapons up and A’keria and Silky tagging along behind them. Since Silky whispered a cover story into her ear before she climbed into the ambulance that held Brooke, watched as her faux serene face became paler and paler. 

Two hours ago. She’s been sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the waiting room of the trauma wing for two hours after watching a team in scrubs whisk Brooke away on a stretcher, her limp hand falling off the side. 

Vanessa has already talked to the detectives covering the case from the same waiting room chair when they came over to sit across from her, notebooks and pens in hand. She explained what happened. Not the full truth, not quite, as that would have done no good for anybody. 

But an abridged version concocted by her team, because what else are politicians good at other than twisting truths to create a more palatable story? Brooke, she told the police, she had hired for private security. Vanessa had threats on her life that became more severe as time passed. She had been at her campaign headquarters one night, only to hear news of men being gunned down in her very own apartment. So she went with her bodyguard for a few days to a safer location, until police back in her home district could catch the killers after her. What her and her bodyguard didn’t expect, however, was to be blindsided at their cabin. Truly an unfortunate situation, and Vanessa was _oh_ so lucky that her bodyguard had been amazing at her job, saved her life. 

Recounting this version of events to the detectives had felt like poison coming off of her tongue. She’s good at twisting the truth, telling people what they want to hear. But this version doesn’t describe how amazing, how selfless Brooke is. Then again, maybe it’s better not to draw more attention to her in the first place. 

Let the police think that Brooke just went into private security after leaving the force. 

Silky’s already gotten someone on her team to draft up fake contracts, fake paperwork of Vanessa hiring Brooke as a bodyguard. Her team is nothing if not efficient. She’s glad, because at this moment she’s not sure if she can do anything but sit in the god awful plastic chair and try to keep herself together. 

It’s proving to be difficult.

She hasn’t broken down yet which is a miracle in itself, considering how much she’s guided by her emotions, by her heart. But half of her heart has been taken away from her, lying in an operating room under unforgiving lights, surrounded by surgeons and nurses. Vanessa isn’t going to allow herself to feel until one of them comes out to tell her that Brooke is okay.

Schrödinger’s operating room, is what it is. 

The door of the waiting room slams when it opens and it makes Vanessa flinch, nearly jump in her seat. She pulls her legs up onto the chair, wanting to curl in on herself. The sweater that A’keria had grabbed for her earlier (one without bloodstains on it, Brooke’s blood) is scratchy on her arms, but she pulls her hands inside the sleeves. 

She doesn’t want to look at the blood that is still caked underneath her fingernails and just wouldn’t come _off_ in the hospital bathroom, no matter how much she had scrubbed her fingers raw. It’s a reminder of how Brooke has saved her life yet again, put herself in front of the line of fire that is always meant for Vanessa.

Brooke’s blood is literally and figuratively on Vanessa’s hands. Her doing.

She wants to disappear. 

“Kiki and I are going to the cafeteria. Need some food or I’m gonna waste away in this holding room. Want anything?” Silky’s voice feels far away, not like it’s coming from right beside her.

“No. Not hungry.” She wants to go back to eating trail mix with Brooke. That’s all.

“You need to eat something, baby, To keep yourself going.” A’keria’s voice is laced with concern, and it makes Vanessa slide down in her chair just a little bit.

“Go, you two. I’m fine.” Maybe having less voices around her will be helpful, make her brain stop screaming at her.

She doesn’t get a chance to explore such an option, though. No sooner do A’keria and Silky get up, both already on their business phones as they leave the room, does a stranger fall down into the chair beside her. 

The first thing that Vanessa notices about the woman is her lankiness as she props up a leg against her chair, limbs folding into the enclosed space as if it’s something that she’s quite used to doing. A detective badge hanging off of a chain catches the light when she lifts up a hand to run it over her buzzed head.

“Who are you?” Is this Yvie? It looks like it could be her, from the descriptions that Brooke has given Vanessa in the past. 

“You must be the famous Vanessa.” The woman tilts her head when she looks at her like she’s studying her, and Vanessa has to fight not to flinch against her gaze.

“Who’s asking?” She’s a little on edge, sure, but the woman doesn’t seem bothered.

“Yvie.” So it is her. “I’ve seen you on TV, girl, you’re not hard to recognize.” Yvie laughs then, and it’s the strangest sound that Vanessa’s ever heard in her life. But one that makes her crack a smile nonetheless, her first one since the sirens started blaring in her mind earlier in the day, only to never stop.

Brooke likes her, so she must not be too bad. 

“Are you here to question me, too?” She’s not sure what version of events she should give Yvie - the abridged story, or the real thing, considering the fact that Yvie’s been helping Brooke the entire time.

“Nah. You’re going through it, so am I. So is Brooke. Let her heal up first, then we can talk.” Yvie pauses. Smirks. “Besides, I’ve already talked to your campaign manager. Fully on board with this…testimony.”

Damn. A’keria spilled the beans to Yvie already? 

Yvie lets out another laugh at Vanessa’s expression, which is doing nothing to hide her reaction. “We’re keeping the story consistent, girl. I’m on your side. Bring your hackles down a little.”

Vanessa bristles, because who is this woman to tell her to calm down? But then Yvie grabs her hand. “Look. I know you’re overwhelmed by all of this shit right now. I get it. She’s gotten through a lot over the years. She may very well get through this, too.”

Vanessa deflates, and can’t help how small her voice comes out in response. “She has to.”

Yvie turns to her, squeezes her hand. “We were real shit starters as detectives together, did you know?” 

“Yeah?” Vanessa looks up at Yvie’s question, looks at the woman whose face seems to be travelling back in time, reliving old memories. 

“Yeah. Barely experienced enough to have made detective and we stomped into that boys’ club like we owned the place. We wanted to prove that we not only belonged there, but were better than them.”

Vanessa imagines a younger and more fiery detective version of Brooke, stepping on everyone’s toes and not caring in the least because she got her work done and then some.  

“We’d have a great time doing the stupidest things to crack cases, make arrests. One time, we were gunning to get into gambling club to find a dangerous perp - the club was known for its exclusivity, hidden in the underbelly of the city. The captain was very much us against doing that, wanted us to wait for a warrant.” She grins. “We very much didn’t listen.”

“Brooke brought in two of the skimpiest dresses I’d ever seen, told me to change into one. We rolled up the the club like we belonged there, like we had less than two braincells but had our respective men who were playing poker inside.” Yvie snorts. “Somehow the bouncers let us in, and we came out with the guy without so much as a gun pulled on us from his bodyguards.”

“Damn.” Vanessa lets out a laugh. She can picture Brooke so well, fearless and acting her little heart out until she got close enough to arrest the guy. “No fear, huh?”

Yvie leans back in her chair. “Memories. It was fun. The two of us were solely responsible for how fast our captain at the time went grey. We gave him so many heart attacks, but also solved cases, so who was he to complain?” 

“Y’all seem like you were nightmares. Complete nightmares. I love it.” She wonders how a detective version of Brooke was on the day to day, with less scars and baggage pulling her down, down, down. If she was just as driven, if she was more naive. It’s strange to think about. 

Nonetheless, she’s glad that she has her version of Brooke. The one who’s gone through so much, yet continues to be so caring and thoughtful and ready to work through her own shit.

Well. Not exactly _her_ Brooke, no matter how bad Vanessa wants her to be. There’s too much going on and she also may be dead on the other side of the operating room wall and-

She lets out a breath, trying to ignore the lump in her throat.

Things would be so much easier if they were other people, any other people. Maybe two women who met at a coffee shop, or were coworkers, or went to the same gym. With mundane lives and simple jobs and maybe some pets, who lived near each other and whose biggest worries would have been about what they would make for dinner.

Vanessa imagines coming home to Brooke - no, she and Brooke coming home at the same time after a late day, shedding their work clothes and putting on comfy pyjamas. Curling up on the couch and watching a movie together. A life where there would be no bullets, no one after their lives, no money over their heads. The tug in her heart for it is so strong that she feels like it’s going to rip out of her chest.

Maybe they’ll have it. One day. 

If Brooke survives through the night first. 

Vanessa’s head snaps up when a surgeon pushes the door open and strides into the waiting room. Sure, it’s probably a false alarm, like the other doctors and nurses who have walked in to talk to other people about patients who are not Brooke. But she can’t help but hope.

But then the surgeon calls out _“Family of Brooke Lynn Hytes?”_ and Vanessa’s out of her chair, stumbling, following her blindly out of the room to an empty hallway because fuck, _finally._

The surgeon’s face betrays nothing about Brooke’s condition, perfectly neutral as she waits for the others to catch up to them (Vanessa may or may not have run to get out of her seat). Vanessa wants to fucking yell. 

“She’s okay.”

_She’s okay._

The two words are enough to nearly knock her over, the weight of them too much to take because she’s okay, Brooke is okay. 

Vanessa feels A’keria’s arm around her waist, holding her up, there’s more words that the surgeon is saying and that the others are nodding in response to but she can’t hear them, not that it matters because Brooke is _okay_.

“Can we see her?” She blurts out the words before she can even think about holding them back, cups a hand over her mouth when she accidentally interrupts what the surgeon is saying.

The surgeon turns to her, mouth turning up when Vanessa mouths ‘ _sorry’._ “Ms. Hytes has just been transferred to the ICU. She’s still in post operative recovery and needs close monitoring over the next few hours, so it would be best if only one of you were to go.” The surgeon pauses. “I’m guessing that will be you?”

Vanessa winces, gives her a sheepish expression. “How’d you guess? Wait, don’t answer that.”

Nonetheless, she’s on the surgeon’s heels shortly afterwards, following the woman past a maze of inpatient wings and hallways and medical professionals in scrubs and lab coats. She’s not sure which direction they’re going in or how she’s going to get out of this labyrinth but she doesn’t care, she’s not going to leave Brooke once she reaches her. Not going to happen.

The surgeon finally stops outside of a room, starts talking to the nurse in the doorway but Vanessa barely notices, because _Brooke._

There’s a tube down her throat and an IV coming out of her arm and so many wires across her body with monitors that beep too loud, but she’s alive. 

Brooke is alive.

Her eyes are still closed, still making it look like she’s asleep but she looks so _small_ in the bed, dwarfed by the tubes around her body that look like they’re about to suffocate her. The urge to just grab Brooke, pull her out and take her away to somewhere safe, somewhere no one can harm her is so strong that Vanessa has to ball her hands into fists and remind herself that Brooke is exactly where she should be right now.

Still, the knowledge that there’s absolutely nothing she can do right now to help Brooke makes Vanessa angrily blink away a tear. She hates it.

She wishes it were her in the bed. It should be her. 

Brooke’s hair is still in its braid from the morning, albeit a bit mussed on her pillow. Vanessa steps closer, tentatively, brushes a piece away that’s in front of her face. A nurse behind her pulls up a chair, and it’s just as well because she collapses into it as she calls out a thank you. Her legs aren’t quite working anymore.

The rise and fall of Brooke’s chest is unnatural, mechanical as it’s controlled by the ventilator that gives her oxygen, helps her to breathe. It reminds Vanessa of when she was 8 years old, after her abuela had a stroke and her whole family came to the hospital to see her.  Vanessa had been so confused, back then, as to why her abuela wouldn’t just wake up, start talking. The comparison feels too erie, too familiar, because her abuela never did. 

Vanessa can feel the lump in her throat becoming harder and harder to ignore, impossible to swallow down. She’s held on for so long, didn’t want to break down in front of anyone but now that it’s just her and Brooke, it feels like she has no strength left to do so anymore. 

She hasn’t had a person in a long time. Can she call Brooke that, her _person_ , after knowing her for such a short period, and in such fucked up circumstances? She wants to. 

She wonders if Brooke would feel the same way. 

It feels cruel to find someone then lose them so quick to circumstances outside of both of their control, out of their doing. She wants to yell, scream, do anything to bring Brooke back from the haze of sedation that she’s under, to know for sure that she’s going to be okay.

Vanessa had to get used to hiding her sexuality in the public eye _(‘for now’,_ Ra’jah had said, ‘ _until you’re elected’)_ and had shut down that part of herself from others, put it away, focusing on her career and on getting as far as possible. But then Brooke came and dismantled everything that Vanessa had carefully constructed and she can’t even be _mad_ about it now, not when the demolition had felt so satisfying. 

Vanessa wants to know Brooke more, every part of her - what makes her laugh, what her favourite TV shows are (other than _Schitt’s Creek_ , which she’s already promised her that she will watch in the future), more about her two cats. What her favourite date activity is. More stories about her shenanigans with Yvie. She wants a promise, a whisper of a future with Brooke. Don’t they deserve as much after all this, after what they’ve been through?

Vanessa reaches out, squeezes Brooke’s hand with two of her own. It’s limp in her grasp, cold even when she tries to warm it in her hands. The hole in her chest feels like it’s growing, caving in on her because Brooke has survived the surgery, being shot, but it feels as if she’s still barely holding on.

Even when the nurses come by and tell her to go take a walk, grab some food, she doesn’t let go. She can’t. 

* * *

 

Bright. Too bright, too loud. Beeping noises that feel like jackhammers on her skull. She wants it to stop, she wants everything to stop. 

Where are Cain’s men? Are they here too? Did they manage to kill her? 

Where’s Vanessa? 

Brooke tries to call out her name but her mouth is too dry, and there’s something stuck in her throat and feels like it’s choking her from the inside out. A tube. She wants to pull it out, but her hands feel too far away, too difficult to lift up. 

The fog in her peripheral starts to take over, a grey that clouds her vision and becomes impossible to ignore. Everything, thankfully, seems to fade away. 

The second time Brooke wakes, she sees her. Vanessa. Hovering behind a nurse who’s holding a tube and was _that_ what was down her throat?

But it doesn’t matter. Vanessa is there, and okay, and is she crying? Brooke doesn’t want Vanessa to cry. 

Brooke tries to say Vanessa’s name, say anything at all but no sound comes out, and her throat hurts too much to try a second time. She wants to tell her about Cain and who’s behind everything because she’s _figured it out_ , she knows that Cain’s family teamed up with the congressman. Tried to take them both out. 

But words aren’t coming out of her mouth, and Vanessa is crying and she wants to reach out to her, soothe her, wipe the tears that are streaming down her cheeks because she doesn’t want Vanessa to be hurt. Her arms are too heavy to lift, and maybe it’s okay if she sleeps again, tells Vanessa later. When her throat doesn’t hurt and her body doesn’t feel like lead. 

The third time that Brooke wakes up, she doesn’t move right away. She opens her eyes, stares at the fluorescent lights above her. Listens to the beeping of machines coming from both her left and right. The last thing that she remembers is the cabin, Vanessa diving on top of her and pain in her chest, but-

She’s not at the cabin. She’s in a hospital. Seems to be the most likely scenario. 

She’s been shot, then. Can’t really recall much else. But then where’s Vanessa? Was she shot too? She lifts her head from the bed, ignoring the sudden spinning of the room around her because no, no no, Brooke’s supposed to keep her safe, she can’t lose her-

She’s beside her. Vanessa. Curled up on a plastic chair, feet tucked underneath her, cheek resting on her hand. 

Sleeping. 

Brooke hears the beeps around her slow down, back to a normal rhythm along with the beating of her heart as it regulates. Vanessa is safe. Alive.

She’s alive. 

Brooke tries to reach out to her because she’s _okay_ but the IV in her arm tugs, sends a shot of pain through her forearm. It creates a domino effect, and suddenly Brooke is hyperaware of every sensation in her body. The spinning of her head, the grey in her vision. The pain that previously hovered above her like a cloud now permeating everywhere, carving a hole into her chest and collarbone and shoulders and it _hurts_. 

She wants to make it stop, but doesn’t know how. She doesn’t realize that a whimper leaves her mouth until she hears it in the small space and Vanessa’s up, out of her chair and all signs of sleep gone. 

Vanessa’s above her and suddenly she’s the only thing that Brooke can focus on, her waves around her face and her eyes that look a little teary and her voice, uncharacteristically soft, whispering _“it’s okay, baby, you’re okay.”_

She must be okay, then. Brooke trusts Vanessa. 

Vanessa’s fingers are running through her hair and it feels nice, distracts her from the pain rippling throughout the rest of her body. 

Maybe her voice will come out now. She can try. 

“Hi.” It’s quiet, crackly, scratches at her throat. 

Vanessa lets out a sound in response that sounds like a squeak, or a cry, like a dying animal. “Hi, honey.”

Vanessa’s hand in her hair shifts to her cheek and Brooke leans into it instinctively. The warmth of Vanessa’s palm, her fingers, feels like it calms the trembling in Brooke’s body, makes everything stop shaking as much. The pain is still there but she can handle it, manage it, with Vanessa in front of her.

“You’re okay. Thank God.” Her voice feels so quiet, too quiet. 

Vanessa hears it though, by the slight sob that leaves her throat in response. “Yeah, I am. I’m good, baby. You need to stop getting shot on me, though. This is the second time. Can’t have it turning into a habit.”

Oh, yeah. She had forgotten about the graze on her shoulder, which she’d stopped bandaging a few days ago because it had seemed to be healing well enough. A papercut when compared to this, the bullet that has ripped through her chest. 

“I’d never been shot until I met you, y’know, so thanks for that.” Brooke grins, no malice behind her words - she’d get shot again and again if it means that she can save Vanessa’s life.

But her words don’t have the intended effect of making Vanessa smile, her face instead crumpling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I should have-”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Does Vanessa blame herself? She shouldn’t, she’s safe and alive and that’s all that matters, at least to Brooke. “Thank _fuck_ you didn’t get hit. I never would have forgiven myself.”

Vanessa sniffles, moves to squeeze her hand. Brooke squeezes back, tugs on Vanessa’s hand until she looks back up at her. “You have great things ahead of you. A future as a congresswoman, maybe a White House run and becoming leader of the free world? Everyone needs you.”

_I need you._

Vanessa looks like she wants to argue, protest her words but then there’s commotion in the hallway, and is that Yvie at the door? Followed by two women that seem incredibly familiar, but whose faces she can’t quite place.

“Goddamn Brooke, do you always have to be so dramatic in everything that you do?” Yvie’s come around her other side, hugging her and squeezing too tight but she lets go just as quick.

“Nice to see you too.” Brooke sees Yvie’s eyes looking wet, files that information away to lovingly tease her over later. 

She shifts her gaze, then, to the other two women who wear matching expressions of wariness on their faces. “I don’t think we’ve met before, I’m-”

“We know exactly who you are, Brooke Lynn Hytes.” The taller woman fixes her with a gaze, and Brooke’s not sure how to react at the use of her full name. “Good thing you already incapacitated or we would be having some words right now.”

“Aw c’mon A’keria, Silky, let her be.” Vanessa’s voice cuts through as her fingers trace patterns on Brooke’s palm. “She saved my life. Again.”

 _Oh._ Brooke realizes where she remembers them from. Weeks and weeks ago, from when she was first staking out Vanessa and was still planning a hit on her. She had seen them in the office, seen them around Vanessa. Her campaign manager and deputy campaign manager. The realization is startling, at first.

Was that really her, back then, only a few weeks ago? It feels like a lifetime, when she had different goals and priorities before everything was flipped upside down thanks to the woman currently squeezing her hand. 

How have they ended up here?

Nonetheless, her manners win out, and she smiles at them. “Nice to meet you.” 

They don’t return it, fixing her with narrowed looks. The shorter woman - A’keria - lets out a disgruntled noise.

“Don’t mind them. They’re still a little salty about the whole hit you had on me, originally. But then she saved my life like three times,” she says the last sentence a little louder, directing it at Silky and A’keria, “So it cancels out, right? Like BEDMAS.” 

Yvie lets out a guffaw beside her as A’keria rubs at her temples. “Vanj, do you even remember 10th grade math at all? How is it BEDMAS? Wait, never mind. Not important.”

Vanessa is unperturbed. “Point is, I probably would have been dead right now if it wasn’t for Brooke. So y’all owe her a thanks that this campaign is even still going.”

A’keria pauses at that, turning towards Brooke. Brooke can see A’keria studying her face, as if she’s trying to look for anything hidden. Not that Brooke has anything to hide at all, right now. Other than the fact that she really, really, could use more painkillers.

A’keria seems satisfied with what she sees. Nice to know that she has her approval. “Thank you, for that. Keeping her alive.”

It seems weird to be thanked for it, unnecessary even, when she’d do it again in an instant. “Of course.” She shrugs, wincing when pain shoots down her shoulder.

Vanessa’s up then, in the hall before Brooke can even blink, yelling for a nurse and most _definitely_ waking up other patients. Though it does the job, her charge nurse bounding into the room and injecting painkillers in her IV. Brooke can’t help but shoot Vanessa a grateful smile, only for Vanessa to return it and place a kiss on her forehead. 

“They always this gross?” While Silky’s voice is a whisper in A’keria’s ear, it’s loud enough to carry throughout the room.

“Watch it!” Vanessa’s voice is a foghorn, and makes Brooke laugh. She’s not sure if she’ll ever tire of it. 

It’s nice. The painkillers are settling in by the way that her body feels lighter, hazier. Everything feels nice. 

Too nice.

She’s missing something.

It doesn’t take long to rush back - the men, their ambush, and she’s gasping, looking up at Vanessa and Yvie because _fuck_ , are they even safe? Do they need to go?

“I know who’s after Vanessa, who’s after _me,_ who’s behind it, they’re probably still coming-” Her breaths are shallow, she can’t breathe, why isn’t anyone else freaking out?

“Hey, hey. We know, baby.” Vanessa’s voice is soothing, calm. How can she be calm?

“What?” Brooke looks up at her, trying to read her face but she can’t tell what Vanessa isn’t saying. Her mind feels too slow, too lethargic. 

“That’s how these three doofuses tracked those guys to the cabin and to us, with the local PD backup. Found ‘em just in time.” 

No, Vanessa’s not getting it, the men were more than just random thugs, disposable pawns. It was planned, both of their demises were planned, and almost happened. 

Brooke tugs on Vanessa’s hand, looks up at her and Yvie. Both of them appear alarmed at how agitated she is, how her heart monitor seems to be speeding up but it’s _important._ But before either of them can say anything, she feels the exhaustion hit.

She’s tired. Really tired, and Vanessa’s tracing patterns on her palm and she can’t do it anymore. She can feel the fight leave her like a balloon, feel the drowsiness hit and it’s _definitely_ the painkillers. Superb timing.

Brooke wants to keep talking, but sleep feels easier as it takes over her vision, colours her sight. 

She hopes they can stay alive for one more day, at least, enough for her to explain and for them to find a way to be safe, consider a counter attack even. But for now, she’s too tired. She falls into dreams of Vanessa instead, the way her dimples become even more prominent when she laughs. Her subconscious has priorities and for once, Brooke isn’t upset at what it has chosen to broadcast.


	11. chapter eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The arrival of Silky, A’keria, and Yvie is a welcome distraction. Vanessa watches Brooke’s face light up as the sounds of bickering in the hallway get louder and louder, culminating in the three of them stumbling into the room, arms laden with bags of takeout.
> 
> Yvie holds one up. “Figured this shit would taste better than whatever you’re getting here.”
> 
> Brooke accepts the bag with grateful hands and pulls out a burger. Vanessa is faster though, and grabs it from her hand.
> 
> “Hey!” Brooke pouts in her direction, and Vanessa has to work hard to keep her face neutral because it’s the cutest sight she’s ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One epilogue to go after this chapter, and Game of Survival is finished! Feels absolutely surreal. Thank you Bean and Writ for being amazing as always in both encouragement and roasting. I need both.

“Miss, if you even _think_ about climbing onto that bed one more time-”

“Okay, okay!” Vanessa raises her hands in surrender, maneuvering herself back into her own chair amidst the sound of Brooke’s laughter. 

Brooke’s nurse isn’t as amused. “Do you want to be responsible for accidentally pulling on Ms. Hytes’ chest drain and IVs? Or upsetting her dressings? Or making her stay in the ICU for longer than necessary?”

Vanessa’s answer is meek. “No?”

“That’s what I thought. Stay there, on your chair.” The nurse points at her like she’s a kindergartener who’s been caught stealing a friend’s snack, and Brooke lets out a snort, one that is spurred further when Vanessa swats at her hand. 

“Yes, mom.” Vanessa can’t help her retort at the nurse. It’s juvenile, she knows, but it cracks Brooke up further so it’s worth it. 

The nurse fixes her with a narrowed gaze, but Vanessa can see the twinkle behind her eyes. “Good thing you’re a politician. Not sure any other field would put up with you acting such a fool.”

“Hey!” Vanessa can’t even be mad because the nurse is right, though she wants to argue that law comes close. She had out-argued many oppositions during her short career as a lawyer before her foray into politics, with techniques that would have made her law school professors drop their heads into their hands. The brazenness still comes in handy now, debating and bullshitting in a way that gets the public on her side. 

The nurse pauses, looking at the two of them and their intertwined fingers. “That being said, happy to hear you’re safe. Heard that you were maybe attacked or something. They talked about it on the 11 o'clock news.” 

“Did they really?” Vanessa tries to keep her voice casual and unaffected, wondering if it was a story planted by Ra’jah or just speculation about what happened based on the bare bone facts known by the public (the explosion, the bodies in her apartment). She hopes it’s the former. 

“Yeah.” The nurse is distracted as she writes in Brooke’s medical chart, seeming to have already moved on from the conversation. “Glad that you’ll live to piss another old politician off. I’d vote for you.” 

Vanessa lets out a breath, looks over at Brooke who raises her eyebrows in response. “Well, I appreciate that…” she pauses, squints her eyes to read the nurse’s nametag, “Asia. And thanks for taking such good care of Brooke.”

Vanessa can hear her politician voice coming out of her mouth and it feels strange, almost foreign, though it’s easy to slip back into the role. One where she reflects the wishes of the public, acting like a beacon to which they can attach their hope and desire for change. She’s not sure how convincing it is, though, considering that she stuck her tongue out at Asia a few minutes prior. 

Asia gathers up some medication vials and gauze, heading out of the room. She pauses in the doorway. “It’s my job. And stay out of that bed, don’t let me catch you in trouble.” 

Brooke’s eyes are alight with mischief when Vanessa looks at her after Asia leaves. “Someone just got yelled at by their teacher.”

“Not even, she likes me. I can tell. I’m a delight.” Vanessa’s humble, real humble, but mostly it’s just to make Brooke smile. “Besides, I’m remembering that it was you, Miss Thing, who asked me to climb up there with you.”

Brooke shrugs, as much as she can in the bed. “Not denying it. You’d make this bed so much comfier.”

“Jesus, woman. You’ll get me kicked out of your hospital room at this point.” Vanessa shakes her head, and can’t hold back her grin. She doesn’t know how the Brooke that she saw so many weeks ago, cold and ready to kill her, is the same one that’s in front of her now with her eyes all up as she taps her fingers on the railing of her bed. But she’s not complaining. 

Brooke coughs and winces, though the grimace on her face is gone as fast as it appears. It doesn’t stop Vanessa from catching it, letting out a sigh. 

“C’mon, baby. Increasing the morphine drip would help. I hate seeing you in so much pain every time you try to fucking breathe.” Brooke can barely move without the drain in her chest shifting positions, a pain that makes her whimper, the sound making Vanessa’s heart tug each time. She hates that Brooke has to go through it.

Brooke’s answer is fast. “No. Absolutely not. I can’t.”

“Why not?” Vanessa doesn’t get it. Why is Brooke insisting on the lessened painkillers, the ones that still leave her aware of the way her chest was cut open and stitched up, feeling every tug and pull?

“I can’t, okay? I just…” Brooke’s words trail off and Vanessa wants to take back her question, seeing the way that Brooke has to close her eyes, steady her breath. “It’s fucking terrifying. Have you had it before? Do you know what it’s like?”

“Aside from some laughing gas at the dentist, not really.” Vanessa feels sheepish as soon as the answer leaves her mouth. 

“It’s nothing like laughing gas.” Brooke’s voice is flat. “It’s like being trapped in my _fucking_ nightmares and not being able to get out and not knowing what’s even real. Everything blurs and suddenly things are here and then they’re not, and it feels like you’re losing your mind. Just slowly, enough to notice it happen.” 

Brooke pauses, swallows hard. “So yes, I’d rather take the pain, bad as it fucking is. I don’t like feeling like I’m losing it. Because I’m not.”

Shit. Vanessa’s really fucked up. She knows sensitivity isn’t necessarily her strong suit, but she wasn’t thinking, seeing it from Brooke’s point of view. “Sorry. You’re not. I...I didn’t know it was like that.”

Brooke deflates. “It’s fine. I’m just going to stick to lesser painkillers, because I’d rather feel it than not know what I’m feeling at all.”  

Vanessa bites her lip. “You’ll tell me, though, if it gets unbearable or worse? We can try to figure something else out.”

“Yeah. I will.” Brooke doesn’t seem to have any fight in her. Neither of them do, not over something where they’re on the same side. 

Brooke’s eyes flit to the clock behind her, almost imperceptibly. “When did you say they were coming, again?”

Vanessa squeezes her hand. “Around 1:00. A’keria and Silky and Yvie are all leaving work early so we can go over this shit as a group.” 

“Okay. Great. Cool.” Vanessa can see the gears turning in Brooke’s brain, spinning faster and faster as her thoughts no doubt start to spiral and build upon one another. 

“Hey. Look at me.” Vanessa keeps her voice soft and her face gentle, stroking Brooke’s palm with her thumb when she hears the shallowness of Brooke’s breathing, the speeding up of the heart rate monitor above their heads. “You’re safe right now. We’re safe. Yvie’s got a police detail outside this room, plus they have the men from the cabin in custody. It’s gonna take a lot more for any bitches to get through to us at the moment.”

Brooke nods though she doesn’t look convinced, her eyebrows creasing just enough that Vanessa wants to reach and smooth them out for her. 

“This hospital is such a damn maze, anyway. It took _me_ about thirty minutes of cursing in hallways to find your room after going to the bathroom. Like an escape room, but in reverse. Ain’t nobody gonna find us in here without a bit of a struggle first.” She wishes she had better words to say, ones to assuage the look in Brooke’s eyes that reminds her of a caged animal.

Brooke is good, too good at tampering it down though, steeling herself. “You’re right.” 

Vanessa’s not sure if Brooke believes it herself. She looks so small in the bed without her leather jacket and weapons and boots, not as if she towers over Vanessa when standing. It makes Vanessa want to cocoon Brooke in some blankets, bubble wrap maybe, to keep her safe. Or, at least give her one of her weapons so that she feels more secure and in control. 

Vanessa wonders what that feels like, the loss of control. Being confined to a three by eight foot bed, unable to get up and move around unless a physiotherapist or a nurse is present. Tethered to the room by IVs and wires and monitors responsible for broadcasting minute details about your body for everyone to see. Going from being able to walk around, lift things, move on your own accord to suddenly...not. At least, not without pain. 

Brooke seems to be taking it well. Real well, by the way her hands are wringing in her lap. It’s only been one day, but Vanessa can tell that Brooke is going a bit stir crazy from being stuck in bed, despite the pain. Vanessa can’t blame her in the least. 

It’s easier when Brooke’s eyes flutter shut as she falls asleep and her face smoothes out, the worries that she carries around with her every day suddenly lifting from her shoulders. Vanessa wishes that she could take them, shoulder them herself so that Brooke doesn’t have to anymore. 

The arrival of Silky, A’keria, and Yvie is a welcome distraction. Vanessa watches Brooke’s face light up as the sounds of bickering in the hallway get louder and louder, culminating in the three of them stumbling into the room, arms laden with bags of takeout. 

Yvie holds one up. “Figured this shit would taste better than whatever you’re getting here.” 

Brooke accepts the bag with grateful hands and pulls out a burger. Vanessa is faster though, and grabs it from her hand. 

“Hey!” Brooke pouts in her direction, and Vanessa has to work hard to keep her face neutral because it’s the cutest sight she’s ever seen. 

Vanessa opts to raise an eyebrow at her instead. “Didn’t the doc say you gotta wait until the speech therapist sees you and makes sure you can swallow okay without choking and shit? Especially because they intubated you, your throat’s probably all scratched up.” 

So maybe sitting in the ICU has turned her into a mother hen. Who’s to say? She just wants Brooke to be careful. 

Brooke’s smile in return is wicked. “Who says I don’t swallow?” 

“Unbelievable.” Vanessa rolls her eyes but can’t hide her grin, especially with the guffaws that come from A’keria, Silky, and Yvie. 

Brooke reaches a hand out for the burger nonetheless. “I’m hungry. If I start choking or something, just call the nurse. Besides, she’ll probably yell at you for it, not me.”

Vanessa can’t say no to Brooke for long, sighing and handing her the burger. “No regard for your safety at all, huh? You’re probably right.”

The way Brooke grins is worth it. Nonetheless, it doesn’t stop Vanessa from watching Brooke like a hawk while she eats. 

Yvie pulls out a small whiteboard from her bag once Brooke is done eating, handing it to her along with a dry erase marker. “Here. I know how much you like making your boards.”

“Boards?” Silky’s question is muffled by a bite of her own sandwich. “Like a Pinterest board?” 

“Not quite.” Yvie grins. “Just watch.”

Brooke pays no attention, already scrawling a name on the board, grip shaky. Vanessa tries to tilt her head to read it. “Cain? Who’s Cain?” 

Brooke bites her lip. “Not just a person. A family. They’re connected to all of this.” 

“How?” 

“It wasn’t just any men who showed up at the cabin,” Brooke starts, twisting the marker in her grip, “they were some of the men that work for that family.”

“I’m confused as hell.” A’keria’s lips are pursed as she stares at the board. “Who are they?”

Brooke swallows hard and Vanessa wants to reach out, squeeze her hand. It takes a second before she speaks. “They had hired me and a...colleague of mine years back, for a hit. My colleague then did another hit for them, and it didn’t go well. He killed the person that he was supposed to, but almost got caught. One of their family members, the matriarch, was convicted for it by police instead. Shuga Cain. They thought that she had done it. She’s now been locked up for years.” 

Vanessa whistles. “Damn. That’s cold.”

“The Cain family was after my colleague for ages after, trying to get back the money for the hit since it wasn’t done right. When he didn’t have the money and instead attempted to pick them off one by one, they killed him. I found him, because he called me instead of calling 911. It was too late when I got there. Idiot.” Brooke pauses, looking down at the board.  

“I’m sorry.” Vanessa’s voice comes out soft, and she wishes she had something better to offer. But what can she say to someone whose life reads like an action thriller movie? 

“It was years ago.” Vanessa can see the mask on Brooke’s face beginning to return, the one that settles into place whenever she shares too much, is too vulnerable. “They’ve been bothering me on and off since then. Wanting the money. Pulling guns when I don’t have it for them. Figure they want an eye for an eye, since my colleague killed one of theirs. So they’ve been going after me.” 

“ _Lord_ Almighty Jesus.” Silky’s statement is punctuated by a sip of her soft drink. “You really know how to get yourself into deep shit, huh?”

Brooke shrugs. “Apparently so. It had been okay, though. I could keep up my job, keep them from getting to me as long as I was careful, extra vigilant.” 

“Wow.” Vanessa thinks of the way that Brooke is always so wary, eyes constantly darting around, and the way her hand isn’t far from a holstered weapon at all times. Things start to make a little bit more sense. “How the hell haven’t you been losing your fucking mind? I would have lost it ages back, having to be so shifty.”

“Who says I haven’t already?” Brooke doesn’t smile. “I got used to it. Being vigilant only helped with the job.” 

“How does that family tie in here?” Yvie’s voice is curious. The connection isn’t clear to Vanessa yet either, making her head spin a little. 

“Him. They were working with him.” Brooke writes the name of the congressman that hired her, and connects it to _‘Cain’_. 

“What? How do you know?” Vanessa can’t help but ask. How would she know? Unless-

“In the cabin. When you were waiting in the car. I was trying to stall them, buy some time until I could figure out what to do, keep them away from you. Got them to spill their plan instead. Those men were not exactly the brightest tools in the shed.” Brooke shrugs.

A’keria leans forward in her chair, still looking a bit skeptical. “What was the plan?” 

Brooke is unperturbed as she continues. “Some of the Cain family members made a deal with the congressman - they were going to complete the hit on Vanessa for half the price that the congressman was originally going to pay me, then frame me for it. Two for one deal. They’d get money - a _lot_ of money - from killing Vanessa, then get their revenge on me. Put me behind bars, the way that Shuga is.”

“That’s-”

“What the _hell-”_

“How-”

Silky’s voice cuts above everyone attempting to speak at once. “They _told_ you all this?”

“It was very last manifesto, final villain speech. More gloating than anything. Not that it mattered, in the end.”

Vanessa snickers, ignoring the look that A’keria sends her way. “They sound like Scooby Doo villains.” 

Brooke snorts. “Fitting. They aren’t exactly high on the Cain family totem pole. I think they were excited to have finally been successful for once. Or at least, they thought so.”

A’keria fixes her steely look on Brooke instead. “How do we know that you’re even telling the truth?”

Brooke shrugs. “You don’t. But what reason would I have to make it up?”

Yvie leans forward in her seat. “Sat in on their interrogations today. Both dropped the congressman’s name - enough for us to bring him in for questioning, at least, so it’s a start.” 

Brooke looks at her in curiosity. “You’re not even from the precinct that they were brought in to. How’d you swing that?” 

Yvie grins. “I can be persuasive when I want to.”

Vanessa doesn’t doubt it, from the way she could hear Yvie bickering earlier with Silky. “Did they mention Brooke? Or me?”

“They mentioned that the congressman had hired them to kill you, but clammed up after more questions. I think that’s when they realized they had gotten themselves into deep shit.” Yvie shrugs. “More than enough information to start off with. But it corroborates what Brooke is saying.” 

Brooke’s slowly covered the board in notes, drawn lines and connected them in an intricate web. It looks like the one that she had made in the cabin, though more detailed. Speaking of which-

“The board in the cabin! Is it still up? Ain’t the police gonna find it?” She and Brooke are so, so, screwed if they do, what if Brooke’s written something about being hired by the congressman-

But then Silky and A’keria look at her with matching sheepish expressions. 

“We _may_ have committed a felony by tampering with evidence and torn it down during the chaos, when we came along with the police. No one was watching us anyway.” Silky’s voice is comically defensive. 

“Not while they were cuffing those guys and tending to Miss Brooke Lynn over here, bleeding out on the ground,” A’keria shrugs, “very easy to do.”

Vanessa’s speechless. She knows her team is good at getting away with things, shady in their actions when they need to in the political realm. But how’d they not get caught with so many officers nearby? “Y’all are something else. Truly something else.” 

“You’re welcome, bitch. You would be in such deep shit without us.” Silky’s grin is satisfied as she high fives A’keria. 

Vanessa shakes her head, impressed. They’re not wrong. 

Yvie raises an eyebrow. “As an officer of the law, I’m gonna pretend that I didn’t hear any of that.” 

“You,” Silky points a finger at her, “of all people, cannot talk. You’ve known Brooke’s a hitwoman for years! Ain’t that some obstruction of justice?”

“Well…” Yvie pauses. “Yes. Let’s just all keep our mouths shut, shall we?”

And here Vanessa thought that politicians were the most shady of all. Turns out everyone is at least a _little_ bit shitty. It’s a bit reassuring, in a strange way. 

Brooke’s smiling, a real smile, looking like she’s having the same thought as Vanessa. “Looks like you all are coming to hell with me. I’ll pack snacks for the journey.”

“Do _not_ even joke about that.” Silky’s immediate protest makes Vanessa giggle. “I am a woman of God, a good Christian lady and will not be coming with y’all, thank you very much.” 

A’keria brings their focus back, pulling out doctored paperwork to go over with them - fake contracts of Vanessa hiring Brooke as a bodyguard, fake business cards that describe Brooke’s services in private security. Brooke whistles, looking up at A’keria. “You are powerful. Scarily powerful, you know that?”

A’keria’s smile is satisfied. “That’s my job, baby. Keeping Vanessa out of trouble. And you too, now. Vanessa’s whining would be too much to deal with if you got arrested.” 

Silky and Yvie snicker when Brooke and Vanessa protest at the same time, though Vanessa can’t even deny the words. 

The three of them leave after that, their loud conversation echoing down the hallway. Vanessa can tell that the methodical planning and mapping out of the details has helped to give Brooke back some sense of control and feel less helpless. She’s glad it worked. 

Brooke turns to her then, as their voices in the hallway eventually fade. “You don’t have to stay, you know. Not gonna make you sit here with me in that uncomfortable chair, you probably have better things that you want to do now that no one’s after you anymore-”

“Absolutely not.” Vanessa cuts Brooke off before she can even finish her sentence, because how can Brooke even think that? “I ain’t leaving you, not now.”

 _Not ever_ , Vanessa thinks, though the words are a bit too scary to say out loud. 

“You shouldn’t feel like you owe me anything, after all this.” Brooke’s voice is small. “I basically kidnapped you and took you to that cabin.”

“You’ve been thinking about that, huh?” Vanessa raises an eyebrow at her. 

Brooke won’t meet her eyes. “No.”

“Brooke,” she starts, then pauses, because how can she even put it into words? “I’m not here because I feel like I owe you for saving my life. Though you did, so thanks for that.”

Brooke giggles at that, though Vanessa can hear the sniffle in her voice. 

Vanessa continues. “I’m here because I care about you. It don’t matter how we started, not when we look at where we are now.”

“Where are we, then?” Brooke’s voice is a challenge, as if she’s wanted to talk about it too. 

“I dunno. Where do you want to be? What do you want us to be?” Vanessa is almost afraid of Brooke’s answer. What if, after all of this, she’s done and wants to move on-

“All I know is that I care about you too.” Brooke almost whispers it. “I haven’t done this in a long time, I don’t even know _what_ to do but I don’t want to lose you. I hate that I almost did.”

“Bitch, I’m the one who saw _you_ get shot.” Vanessa has no conviction when she says it because her heart is soaring - Brooke doesn’t want to be done, she cares about her, and yes maybe Vanessa already knew that but hearing it out loud? Makes all the difference. 

The reminder of two days ago (has it really been two days since the cabin?) makes Vanessa bite her lip. “I nearly fucking lost it on the paramedics, you know. Thought they were taking too long, thought they wouldn’t be able to save you. I thought I was losing you and it was going to make me lose my mind.” 

She doesn’t want to think about it. What if it had happened? What if Brooke had died underneath her, a pool of blood staining her shirt and had never opened her eyes again? What if she’d have to go back to the campaign trail and pretend that everything was okay, and she didn’t just lose someone who had very quickly become the most important person in her life? 

She hates the thought. 

Brooke’s hand is on hers, eyes searching her face. “I know the feeling. And I’m here, I’m okay. And you won’t lose me - not if you don’t want to.”

The words lift the heaviness in Vanessa’s heart, a little. She squeezes Brooke’s hand. “I want you and your murdering ass around. Though you may have to find a new career path.” 

Brooke lets out a snort. “I’ll go on _Indeed_ as soon as I’m out of the hospital.”

“But yeah, I’m serious. I’m staying here again tonight. Not because of obligation, but because I want to. As long as you’re okay with me curling up on this chair beside you.” Vanessa keeps her voice hopeful. 

Brooke pats her bed. “Not feeling confident about climbing back in here, huh?”

“Are you kidding? And get chewed out by Asia again? No thank you. Though maybe you can convince me, somehow.” 

Brooke rolls her eyes at Vanessa’s obvious flirtation. “You have to wait until I’m not in a hospital bed anymore, Ness.” 

Vanessa shrugs. “Hey, it was worth a shot.” She leans over and places a kiss on Brooke’s forehead nonetheless, feeling the warmth in her heart begin to grow when Brooke’s cheeks turn slightly pink. 

“There will be time for more of that after, I promise.” Brooke smiles at her. “We’ll make time, even though we won’t be in a little cabin anymore.”

The promise is there now between the two of them, and it settles some of the worries that have been floating around in Vanessa’s chest (ones that she paid less attention to during the past day, concerns about Brooke’s immediate safety more prominent). It’s nice. Brooke’s willing to make it work, give it a try. 

They could make it happen. Vanessa has no idea what it’ll look like, how her campaign and publicity will affect their dynamic, but she doesn’t care right now. 

They’re gonna have a future. A real future. 


	12. chapter twelve (epilogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> epilogue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've stuck around to the last chapter of this fic, kudos to you. This is the first multichapter fic that I've written and actually finished, and it's been so much fun. I've enjoyed writing it so much, as well as the response to it - if you've ever left a review, please know that I'm so grateful for it. This fic is quite literally my first-born child and while I had the outline for it completely planned out before writing it, it took on a life of its own and it's been such a fun journey. I'm going to miss writing it and miss these versions of Brooke and Vanessa so, so much. Thank you so much for reading. Enjoy the epilogue.

“Congresswoman, mind if I steal you away for a minute for some questions?”

Vanessa turns to whom she presumes is the next reporter waiting to speak to her. “Of course, hello-”

Oh. Not a reporter. 

“Hi.” Brooke’s smile is mischievous with a hand on the small of Vanessa’s back, pulling her close and pressing a kiss to her lips. 

Vanessa can’t help but grin up at her fiancée, ignoring the camera flashes and the questions that are being yelled at them from just a few feet away. “Hi, baby.” 

“Have I mentioned how proud I am of you tonight? Because I’m fucking proud of you.” The way Brooke is beaming down at her makes Vanessa truly believe that she means it. 

“Mmm, you may have mentioned it once or twice. Maybe a couple times when the final poll numbers were announced.” She’s so lucky to have had Brooke with her the entire run, both literally and figuratively. 

“Winner of the Democratic primary. I had no doubt that you could do it.” 

“Is this your way of telling me _‘I told you so’?”_

Brooke gasps in mock offence. “Not at all. Okay, maybe a little. I’m glad you went for it now, though. Waiting for another election cycle was smart.”

Vanessa nods. “It would have been a lot tougher on the both of us if I ran four years ago.” 

It’s true. Four years ago they had been dating for a year, Vanessa a newly elected congresswoman. It had been a busy time even without considering the fact that it was right before an election year. The congressman who’d ordered the hit on Vanessa had been convicted after a long, seemingly never ending trial. Vanessa had testified, holding enough information back to be as truthful as possible. 

Vanessa had also lobbied in congress for Shuga Cain’s release, citing improper police investigation procedures, and secured it. It was something that she’d had long discussions with Brooke about - the woman hadn’t done the crime, and while her family was shadier than a maple tree in the springtime, she didn’t deserve life in prison. Cain’s acquittal was enough to get her family off of Brooke’s back - with no one after her head, she was _free._

Not that it had been that easy. 

Vanessa had been the first one to go to therapy. The nightmares, the flashbacks, the worries of not only her own death but that of Brooke had piled upon her shoulders brick by brick, torn down the foundations of her resolve which she had to work, really work, to build back up. 

Brooke had been harder to convince. Vanessa had known that it would be a difficult battle, a long one, because Brooke was (and still is) used to taking care of herself. Pushing down anything that bothered her, compartmentalizing because she felt as if she had no other choice. Pushing Vanessa away in the process. 

A small part of Brooke’s reasoning was that she would never fully be able to be honest with a therapist. Not with her history, her past, her job. But Vanessa had still wanted her to try, to frame it in the context of her detective career. 

The many fights, many long discussions before Brooke agreed to try, then stay in therapy had been exhausting for Vanessa, with Brooke no doubt feeling the same. Though even she had admitted one night when they were curled up under the covers and limbs tangled that she was glad for the push, no matter how _annoying_ Vanessa had been about it (Brooke’s choice of words, not hers, thank you very much). 

It was something that Brooke had to get used to, Vanessa had noticed, learning to channel her vigilance into her new job. 

A job that Brooke’s now held for the last four years - Vanessa’s primary bodyguard, part of her larger security team. After all, the hiring managers had _loved_ Brooke ( _“You’re good at keeping the bitch from dying,”_ had been Silky’s glowing review) and her references had checked out (a lot of begging from Vanessa). 

A conflict of interest, sure, but who else would Vanessa even have by her side, protecting her? The last few years have been mercifully free of bullets, of hits on her life - something that they’re both thankful for, though it doesn’t stop Brooke from being extra alert, extra careful while she’s on the job.

Not to mention Brooke’s outfits while she’s working. Vanessa knows she has a thing for Brooke in her leather jacket, but Brooke in a _fucking suit?_ She’s pulled her fiancée into too many empty hallways and rooms to count for rushed makeouts, teasing and promises of later. No one’s ever said that she has good self control.

“Happy anniversary, by the way.” Vanessa keeps her voice low, but she wants to scream it from the rooftops. Five years. Five entire fucking years. 

“Wrong. Our anniversary was three days ago, and you know it.” Brooke raises an eyebrow. “I happen to remember you greatly enjoying the night we had.” 

“Our anniversary is _not_ based on the first time we had sex. It’s based on us talking about being together, when you were in the hospital.” Vanessa pouts. “Celebrating the first time we boned isn’t _romantic._ But that talk we had felt so right, it fits. It feels official.” 

“But we became so much more close to each other after the night we first had sex. Both literally and figuratively.” Brooke winks at her and Vanessa can’t suppress a groan. 

“Must we do this every year?”

“It’s part of the fun. Plus, I know how much you secretly love celebrating two anniversaries and the chance to get doubly spoiled.” 

“Maybe so.” Vanessa can’t deny it, it _is_ fun. Brooke is too good to her - and with Brooke’s arm around her waist, she thinks for the millionth time that night about how fucking lucky she is. 

“I have to go give my speech soon.” Vanessa says it with a mixture of both excitement and regret, because having Brooke on her arm is her favourite feeling in the world, but-

She’s just won the primary _._ The fucking Democratic primary. And she has an excuse to gloat about it. 

“Told you it was smart to memorize it last night.” Brooke’s eyes are sparkling with pride, happiness. It makes Vanessa want to twirl her around, ignoring the fact that she’d have to stand on a chair to be tall enough to do so. 

“I just wanted to be _sure_ I was going to win before getting ahead of myself, y’know?” Vanessa has a habit of getting her hopes too high sometimes, and has had to reel it in the last few years in politics. She’s learned to keep her expectations realistic now, and gets to be pleasantly surprised when things work out just the way she wants them to. 

“And now you’ve done it, and it’s time to celebrate.” Brooke leans down to kiss her, pulling back for a second before leaning in to whisper in her ear. “I have a surprise for you tonight.”

“Yeah?” Vanessa looks up at the smirk on Brooke’s face, the one that she’s trying to keep from spreading. 

“Yeah.” Brooke grabs Vanessa’s hands then, brings them to her hips and _oh._

Garters underneath Brooke’s dress, and who knows what else other lingerie that’s peeking out and is that an outline of lace? 

“Are you trying to kill me before my speech? Is that what you want to do?” Vanessa mutters it into Brooke’s ear, doesn’t even need to look at her to know how satisfied she is. 

“Maybe. You’ll have to wait to find out what else is waiting for you tonight, though.” Brooke’s fingers rake up her sides, keeping it relatively PG because they _are_ in public, after all. 

Still. Doesn’t stop Vanessa from wanting to take Brooke into the nearby supply closet and having her way. She’s only human. 

“I’m going to go before you leave my brain unable to function, you minx.” Vanessa pulls away as Brooke lets her hand travel a _little_ too far down on her backside which the cameras better not have caught, no ma’am. 

“Alright, Madame President.” Brooke’s smile is wicked. 

Vanessa swats at her, because Brooke loves to tease her like this way too much. “ _Hush,_ we ain’t even close to that at all yet, don’t be putting juju into the universe that may not even happen.” 

“Maybe I just really want to be your First Lady.” 

“And a beautiful one you will make. _Hypothetically,_ if it happens. But we ain’t saying nothing yet.” Vanessa pictures Brooke on her arm the way she is now, except in the White House, on Presidential visits…she can’t get ahead of herself just yet. No matter what the election year will hold. 

“In all seriousness, though, so damn proud of you, Ness. Now go knock them dead while I grab another glass of white and cheer the loudest out of everyone.” Brooke lifts her empty glass and Vanessa snorts because of course she’s gotten through two already. 

“Okay. Love you.” 

“Love you too.” There’s no hesitation in Brooke’s response, and it makes Vanessa’s heart calm down, relax, before she has to give one of the most exciting speeches of her life. 

She has to go find A’keria, smooth over last minute details before she speaks. They have more battles ahead, more races to win in the future, but it doesn’t matter. 

With her friends and colleagues and family and Brooke by her side, she’s already won. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm currently working on two new multichaps: a pacific rim au, and a hospital au. Not sure on the timelines, but we'll see what happens - stay tuned for both!

**Author's Note:**

> find me at @plastiquetiaras on tumblr!


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